how to save a life
by Faerie0975
Summary: "aunt jenna? do you have a minute?" jeremy looked nervous, she noticed. jenna braced herself, but what came out of jeremy's mouth next was nothing like anything she could have come up with on her own. "do you believe in vampires?" / on hiatus.
1. Prologue: Secrets

**Prologue**

"Aunt Jenna? Do you have a minute?"

Jenna Sommers glanced up from her laptop. The blank document had been open on her screen for the past twenty minutes. Taunting her. She was _supposed_ to be writing her thesis - but she'd been delaying it, procrastinating, and now she knew exactly why her mother had always told her not to do that. The cursor blinked on as she smiled at her fifteen-year-old nephew.

Jeremy Gilbert had been having a few issues in the past year. His parents - Jenna's sister and her brother-in-law - had died in a car accident; Elena, Jeremy's older sister, had been the only one to survive the accident, somehow managing to get out of the car after it went off the old Wickery Bridge. Jeremy had messed around with drugs and alcohol for the summer, but Jenna and Elena had come down hard on him when school started again... or tried to. It hadn't exactly worked.

Just as things had started to look a little better for him, Jeremy's girlfriend, Vicki, had disappeared. Then he'd discovered that Elena was adopted, and not too long after that, Vicki showed up - dead. Jenna wasn't sure if he knew the rest of the story about Elena - that Jeremy's uncle, John, was actually Elena's birth father. You would think that would be where things started to get more normal, but that wasn't the case. Some psycho killer had gotten into the house and attacked John on Founder's Day. But now things were finally starting to lighten up: Jeremy had stopped doing drugs, stopped drinking, started doing somewhat well again in school. And now, Jenna was fairly certain that he was _happy._ Which could only be a good thing.

"Aren't you going out with Anna tonight?" she asked. She had to admit that she liked the new girl in Jeremy's life - she was a hell of a lot better for him than Vicki Donovan was, that was for sure.

"Um, yeah. But I... I have to talk to you." He looked nervous, she noticed. _Oh, crap._ Was he going to ask her some overly personal question or something? She panicked, her heart beat maybe even speeding up a little. Had Miranda and Grayson given their son the sex talk before their car went off the bridge? Was that up to _her?_ She didn't think she could handle that. Maybe she'd have to bring Ric in for the Talk... Jenna wondered what Jeremy would think of _that._ His history teacher telling him to use a condom...

"Sure," she said easily, pretending she wasn't scared out of her mind at that particular moment. What kind of thing could he want to talk about? Closing the laptop, she patted the seat next to her at the kitchen table. As casually as possible, she asked, "What's up?"

Jeremy let out a long breath as he sat down. He didn't look at her; instead, his gaze rested on his fingers as they drummed on the tabletop restlessly. Jenna smiled softly as her eyes caught sight of the ring on his finger. Just before leaving town, John had given the ring, a Gilbert family heirloom, to Jeremy.

Taking a deep breath, Jeremy finally looked up and met her eyes. Jenna braced herself for anything she could think of. _Anna's pregnant. Jeremy killed someone. Elena was in a car crash... _No, Elena was upstairs, getting ready to go over to Caroline's house for a girls' night with her friends. And what came out of Jeremy's mouth next was nothing like anything she could have come up with on her own.

"Do you believe in vampires?"

_**Author's Note: **__Okay, yeah, so I've been a twit and haven't updated any of my stories in the longest time... But I got a little plot child for a Vampire Diaries fanfic, sort of, so I figured why not? :P_


	2. Avalanche

**Chapter 1**

Jenna opened her front door, saw him standing there, and nearly shut it in his face. She stopped herself, though, and just stared at him instead. A little coldly, to be sure, but he didn't seem to notice. She nearly couldn't do it, couldn't pull it off. That was a hazard when you fell in love, Jenna supposed - it was hard to be mad at the person you fell for.

"Hey," he said, smiling at her. Okay, so there was no way he knew that she knew... Well, he'd know soon enough. She was going to give him _hell_ for not telling her.

"Hi, Ric," she responded, her tone of voice almost as cold as her gaze.

Alaric Saltzman still didn't notice. He stepped inside, past Jenna, turning to face her as she shut the door behind him. She took a step, just one step, away from the door. She felt like she had to be _closer_ to him... Why was that? He'd kept a secret this big from her. Secrecy in a relationship was _never_ a good thing. Jenna knew all too well about secrecy. It seemed that every guy she fell for kept secrets, whether those secrets were about how much they loved her, or if they were cheating on her, or if they were gay. Or if they knew a huge secret about the town of Mystic Falls...

She'd thought Ric was different.

"How was your day?" Ric was asking.

Jenna shrugged, her eyes fixed on a point just above his right shoulder. She could see the kitchen window, the quickly-darkening sky outside it, the stars beginning to twinkle as the moon rose. "It was okay." Three short words, no emotion. She didn't move her eyes from the kitchen window.

He actually noticed this time. Frowning down at her worriedly, Ric let his fingers brush over the bare skin of her upper arm. Jenna shivered, her skin tingling under his touch. "You okay?" asked Ric.

Jenna fought to keep the coldness in place. "I'm fine." She didn't smile as she said it.

Ric's brow lowered still further. "Are you sure?"

Jenna's resolve almost broke then. He was too sweet. If only he hadn't been keeping such a big secret from her... "Yes," she said, trying to sound a little more sure of herself. It didn't matter that she wasn't.

It didn't work, anyways. Alaric wouldn't give up. "No, something's wrong." Jenna shook her head, but he went on, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Of course she did! But Jenna was stubborn. Things _had_ to go exactly the way she had imagined it, the way she'd mapped out the conversation in her mind. She would talk about it when _she_ felt like it, when _she_ decided to bring it up, and no sooner. She shook her head again, more violently, praying that he would take the hint.

He didn't. His blue gaze was as intense as ever as he looked down at her. He was so close, mere inches away from her. She wanted him to be, if possible, even closer. It was almost unbearable. Why did she have to love him so much?

"C'mon, Jenna, spit it out. What's wrong?"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

The words came out before she could stop them. Jenna had to force herself not to clap her hands over her mouth when she realized she'd actually said it out loud. She hadn't meant to. She wished she could take it back. It was too late now. He had this ability to just _pull_ anything out of her, apparently.

Ric looked uncertain. There was a long silence, the seconds dragging on. The clock ticked relentlessly from its place on the wall over the kitchen sink. Taunting her... She realized that her laptop was still sitting on the kitchen table, the cursor still blinking. After Jeremy had left to go out with Anna, she'd tried to focus on it, to keep her occupied. It hadn't worked. She'd ended up pacing around the first floor of the house, twisting her fingers together to keep her somewhat sane. Somewhat. It hadn't exactly worked.

"Told you... what?" Ric sounded hesitant. He was testing the waters, Jenna thought bitterly. Seeing just how much she knew. She'd seen that technique before.

She tried not to roll her eyes. "Don't, Ric. Don't play dumb," she snapped. "I know about vampires."

There she went again! His eyes widened, and Jenna almost laughed at his expression. Inside, though, her mind was screaming at her. Why had she just _said _it? She'd been planning on holding it back for longer, playing some sick, twisted game, the kind that guys usually played on her.

Sighing, Jenna asked again, "Why didn't you tell me?"

Ric let out a long breath. He didn't answer her question. "Who told you?" he asked instead. Why was he answering all of her questions with _more questions?_

She wasn't going to answer. Really, she wasn't. But the name slipped from her mouth before she could stop it, before she could close her lips around it and trap it inside. "Jeremy." Ric's hand was now frozen on her arm. Did he know? That Jeremy knew? God, the secrets were just _too much._

Jenna waited again, watching him. She could practically _see _his brain working furiously, figuring out what to say. How he could redeem himself for not telling her. "What, exactly, did he tell you?"

"Why aren't you answering my question?" Jenna stared at him evenly. Ric watched her silently, obviously hoping she'd give up, stop waiting, tell him what she knew. She didn't let him get to her. Crossing her arms over her chest, Jenna waited. The time ticked by; the two of them were statues, standing frozen at the foot of the stairs.

"It wasn't my secret to tell," Ric said quietly. Jenna still didn't say a thing. "How much do you know?" he pressed.

"I know that they don't all burn in the sun," she told him reluctantly, carefully, making sure she was saying everything the way Jeremy had told her. It made more sense that way. "I know that the perfume Elena gave me has something in it..." She sturggled to remember the word. "Vervain," she said triumphantly. "It stops them from _compelling_ me." Ric was looking at her, waiting for her to go on. "Vicki was one. Jeremy told me that's what happened to her. And Anna - she's one, too. Her mom was one, but she was... staked. And Damon Salvatore -"

Ric nodded as Jenna made a face. She'd never really liked Damon, and that feeling had been growing more prominent in the time since she'd found him and Elena making out on her front porch. Jenna knew all too well what it was like to be cheated on. To say the least, she wasn't altogether thrilled at the prospect of her niece doing that to Stefan. Hell, she was _pissed. _She made yet another mental note to talk to Elena about that... soon. She'd been putting it off.

"Well, I see you're taking the Salvatore brothers' vampirism pretty well," said Alaric.

Jenna froze.

Her mind worked furiously, deciphering what he'd said, word by word. "Wait," she sputtered, as the final pieces of the puzzle clicked into place, "the Salvatore _brothers?_ You mean... Stefan's a... a..."

Ric paled. He'd made a boo-boo. Something had slipped out. Something he wasn't supposed to say. "You didn't know that part?" he whispered. It was a statement, not a question, although the pitch of his voice still went up at the end, just a little.

Jenna felt like she'd been punched in the stomach. "Elena's... dating a vampire?" she choked out. "Does she _know?_ What he is?"

On the outside, she supposed, she looked a lot more calm. Like she was taking it well. But inside, Jenna was a mess. Not only had Jeremy been with two _different _vampire girls, but now Elena was in on this, too? Jeremy hadn't said a thing about Stefan being a vampire. Jenna shut her eyes to gather her thoughts. Who _else_ had been keeping secrets from her? Was nearly every guy she'd ever known not enough?

Ric was nodding slowly. "She's known since, I think, before I came to town."

Opening her eyes, Jenna glared at him. "And no one ever thought that maybe they should have told _me? _Who else knows?" she snapped. "Who else is a vampire? Have you got any _more_ secrets to tell me?"

He hesitated. Jenna could see it in his eyes. And she knew what that meant. There was at least one other secret. He was just contemplating whether or not to tell her. Jenna was an expert at figuring out the expressions that guys wore.

"No," he said finally.

Jenna knew better than to believe him. Being cheated on, ied to, all of that _wonderful_ stuff - it made you be able to see through the lies. Okay, it didn't, not really. It made you be able to see through _some_ of the lies. The less-carefully-guarded ones. Jenna could tell Ric was lying, and there was no way in hell she was letting him get away with that. But she forced herself to nod, then stalked into the kitchen, making it clear through her body language that she was pissed. _Very_ pissed. Opening the fridge, Jenna examined its contents, then closed it again. She wasn't hungry. Then a horrible thought crossed her mind.

What if Ric was cheating on her?

Oh, she knew he didn't seem like the type. Although Logan hadn't either, not at first. It was definitely a possibility. Jenna had the _worst_ luck with guys. Almost anything that could go wrong between her and a guy, had happened to her. She had been cheated on. Abused. Rejected. Used. She'd been lied to, won over, stood up, left behind. She'd been broken-hearted more times than she could count.

Ric had followed her into the kitchen. She stood there, facing the closed refrigerator. She could hear his breathing behind her as he waited for her to turn around. She didn't. Her mind screamed at her not to ask, but she did anyways. "Are... are you..." She swallowed. Her mouth felt dry. "Is there someone else?"

She heard Ric's sharp intake of breath. He was surprised. She couldn't decide if that was a good or bad thing. "No," he said quickly. "No, there's no one else."

Jenna couldn't tell if he was lying or not.

She didn't turn around, just stared at the cold, stainless-steel door of the refrigerator. When she finally gathered the courage to speak, her voice shook a little. "Then what aren't you telling me?" She half-wanted to turn around, but she couldn't. Instead, she just listened as he sighed again.

"Logan was a vampire," he said. Jenna's eyes widened. Logan? She thought back to when he'd showed up again. _Hello, Jenna._ She'd been stunned to see him; he had disappeared not too long before that. Sending her an email. _I'm leaving town. See ya._ She'd stared at him for a while. _Aren't you going to invite me in?_ Was that what he'd said? Yes. And according to Jeremy, vampires had to be invited into a house before they could get inside.

At Alaric's next words, Jenna was frozen again. "I killed him."

Ric killed Logan... Well, that would explain Logan's _second_ disappearance... But Ric - a killer? She couldn't see that. She had no time to dwell on it, though; he was going on, his voice filling the empty kitchen.

"And Isobel isn't dead."

At this, Jenna finally spun around to face him. He looked down at her, his face nearly expressionless. He was closer to her than she'd thought; it startled her, but she tried not to show it. She narrowed her eyes at him angrily. "What?" she exclaimed incredulously. She couldn't _believe_ he hadn't told her that - here she was, feeling like she had to be _beyond_ careful with this guy, because he'd lost his wife, and he _hadn't? _Was he still in love with Isobel? Jenna very suddenly felt guilty. What if Isobel _hated_ her? Jenna had hated girls who her boyfriends had cheated with. Just because Jenna hadn't known Isobel was alive, that didn't mean it wasn't cheating... Right? It wouldn't be unreasonable for Alaric's wife to hate her.

And that meant that Elena's birth mother wasn't actually dead! Did Elena know that? Oh, she probably did. She seemed to be in on everything else, Jenna thought bitterly. Had she been the _only_ one to not know a thing?

"I thought she was," he continued, "but then I found out that she didn't die... Damon turned her, and -"

"And you didn't tell me."

"I couldn't," he said. It looked like it was painful for him to talk about how he'd been keeping secrets from her. Well, if he' dwanted to tell her, he should have. "You didn't know about vampires. I wasn't in a position where I could tell you."

Jenna galred at him. "You didn't have to tell me about Stefan and Damon. You could have just told me about Logan. At _least._ That _directly _involved me..." Ric tried to wrap his arms around her comfortingly. It was a nice gesture, one that Jenna usually would have appreciated, but at this particular moment, she didn't want it. Ducking out from under his arms, she escaped to the other side of the island.

"Jenna," he pleaded, following her. "I _couldn't,_ all right? I couldn't tell you. I should have done it anyways. I'm sorry."

"I've been lied to before, Ric. I don't usually like the truth, but I can handle it."

He was being as stubborn as she could sometimes be. "I'm sorry. I wanted to tell you. Stefan and Damon wouldn't let me."

"Wouldn't _let_ you?" she snapped, looking away. "It's a free country, Ric."

"They probably would have killed me," he said quietly.

Jenna's head snapped back around to look at him. Of course she didn't want that - but she _did_ wish he'd told her the big secret, or at least part of it. She hated having things kept from her. It was something that came from being lied to by so many people throughout her entire life. _No, Jenna, I'm not cheating on you. Yes, Jenna, I love you. _Practically everyone who knew her, knew that. It was something she was _very_ touchy about.

Ric took a step forwards, his hands finding her bare arms again. "Jenna," he said quietly. She stared up at him, waiting. "I don't know how many times you want me to say this. _I wanted to tell you. _I should have told you about Logan, at least. I'm sorry. But I can't go back and change it, can I?" She didn't move. She didn't speak. Slowly, Ric leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. After a moment, he pulled away and just looked down at her hopefully.

"You can ask anyone, Ric," she told him. "_Anyone._ They can all tell you how much I hate being lied to." Very suddenly, something he had said earlier sunk in. _And Isobel isn't dead... Damon turned her._ "Wait - did you say _Isobel's_ a vampire?"

Ric looked a little embarrassed. "Yeah. She, um... Damon said that she didn't... she wasn't _getting enough_ from me. She wanted more. She wanted that - that life. That's what she'd been researching," he added, "for her whole life, practically. Vampires and anything else... supernatural."

"Anything else?" she asked, catching onto the key words. "Like what?"

"Now _that's_ something I _really_ can't tell you," he told her, smiling and leaning in to kiss her.

Jenna pulled back. "Nope," she grinned. "I havent' forgiven you yet." Looking away playfully, she fell silent. Alaric pressed his lips to the side of her head, breathing in the scent of her hair. Jenna sighed, smiling, and turned to look at him again. "Okay, I _guess_ I forgive you..." A smile spread across Ric's face as Jenna stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

She really couldn't resist him, she thought as his hands traveled over her body, one to the small of her back and the other to twist itself into her auburn hair. He was so much better for her than Logan or Isaac or John or Peter or any of the rest of them...

Jenna was used to falling in love. She fell too fast and too hard, and for all the wrong guys. Guys who weren't looking for anything serious, giuys who were obviously cheaters, guys who could only be bad news. She fell for all of _those._ That was how it had always been. Was it cheesy to say that falling in love with Ric felt, somehow, _different?_ Maybe he would actually be good for her. Maybe nothing would ruin it. Maybe she wouldn't say or do the wrong thing like she tended to always do.

Somebody cleared their throat pointedly. Jenna and Ric pulled away from each other, Jenna dropping her arms from where they were very suddenly around his neck and taking a full step back, blushing. Ric cleared his throat awkwardly. _I wish I could just go die in a hole,_ thought Jenna, noticing who was standing there, eyebrows raised. Her face was as red as a tomato, and she knew it. "Jeremy." She acknowledged her nephew quietly, almost in a whisper.

"Um, hey," said Jeremy, looking appropriately awkward as he stood there, framed in the kitchen doorway. Edging into the kitchen, Jeremy grabbed a root beer from the fridge and backed out of the room.

_**Author's Note: **__Whoa, this chapter is six pages on AppleWorks... Haven't written a chapter that long in *ages.* Um... Yeah. Ric made a boo-boo, haha. It was necessary. XD  
_

_Okay, so someone asked in a review when, exactly, this story takes place. I figured I should put that up. So... "How To Save A Life" takes place after the end of season 1, in the beginning of season 2. I'm sure that some parts will be the same throughout the story and season 2 of the show... Some facts to take into account..._

_~ Anna is NOT dead. I couldn't bear to see her die again. I loved her.  
~ Katherine is back. Where would all the drama be without her.  
~ Jenna found Katherine and Damon making out on the front porch and invited Katherine in, thinking it was Elena.  
~ Jeremy didn't overdose because Anna didn't die! Yay! But he still has that little capsule of her blood.  
~ Katherine chopped John's fingers off and stabbed him, and Elena found him.  
~ Stefan told John to leave town, and John did, after giving Jeremy his ring.  
~ Caroline is a vampire. I love her, she's so cool.  
~ Jenna knows that Elena's birth parents are John and Isobel.  
~ She does not know that Isobel is a crazy, psychopathic vampire.  
~ She does not know that Katherine is here, looks like Elena, and has been invited in._

_Anyways, I wanted to say thanks to the people who reviewed, I don't think I've ever gotten that many reviews for a prologue/first chapter that fast before... :P_


	3. Iris

**Chapter 2**

Jenna gave Ric credit for not speaking until he heard Jeremy's bedroom door close upstairs. He looked down at her, smiling, clearly amused. She was probably still red, she thought, and the embarrassment she felt at that probably didn't help the situation. Willing the colour to leave her cheeks, Jenna looked down at her feet.

Slowly, Ric reached up and tilted her face up towards his. "I should probably go home," he told her. She nodded slowly, but her mind was screaming at her to make him stay. He kissed her again, then let himself out of the house, promising to call her the next day. Jenna stood alone in the middle of the kitchen now, and she finally had time to think, to process everything that she'd learned that night.

Vampires. Vampires were _real._ And both Elena and Jeremy were dating them. And Logan had been one, but Ric had killed him... And Ric's wife wasn't dead. Elena's vampire-boyfriend's vampire-brother had _turned_ her. Isobel probably hated Jenna for being with Ric. If Jenna was in her position, she would hate herself, too. And then there was the fact that Elena was... cheating? Was she? On Stefan... With his brother. Jenna really did have to talk to her about that.

What was it that Ric had said? _Vampires, and anything else... supernatural._ Which meant that there were other mythical creatures running around in the real world. Right? Jenna hugged herself and glanced anxiously around the kitchen. What _kinds_ of mythical creatures? Werewolves? Mermaids? Witches? Leprechauns? What else? _Leprechauns._ No way. Sitting at the end of the rainbow with a pot of gold? Jenna didn't think so.

Eventually, she gathered the courage to go upstairs and face her nephew. She knocked softly on his door, waited a respectable five seconds (one Mississippi... two Mississippi...) before turning the knob and poking her head into the room. "I come bearing gifts," she said, eying him cautiously.

Jeremy sat at his desk, bent over his sketchpad in the dim light pooling around the lamp next to him. He looked up and raised his eyebrows at her. "Really? What kind of gifts?" he asked. He was feigning interest, but Jenna didn't care. It was better than the alternative - the silent treatment.

She took a step into the room. "Um, I lied. I don't actually come bearing gifts..." Then she held up one finger and stuck her other hand into her pocket. "Wait - I have this lucky penny. I found it when I was vacuuming." She held it out as she reached the desk. He took the penny and examined it, squinting a little, before placing it on the corner of the desk's wooden surface, heads up, with a soft _click._ "Sorry about that," Jenna added. She knew that he could tell what she was talking about. Jeremy didn't say anything. Jenna sighed, then smiled, trying to shake the tension in the room. "Are you going to ignore me now? Because... I just brought you a lucky penny. So that is _no_ way to repay me, young man."

She didn't have to look at him to know that he was rolling his eyes. "I'm just trying to get over how _awkward_ it is," said Jeremy, "to walk into your own kitchen and find your history teacher shoving his tongue down your aunt's throat."

Jenna could feel her face going red again. Thank _God_ that Jeremy nearly always kept the lighting dim in his room... "What happened to 'murdering him for not telling you,' anyways?" asked Jeremy, frowning at her.

"I guess I did say that, didn't I? Well, it's not like I _could_ kill him, anyways..." She grinned at her nephew, but quickly sobered up. "Thanks for telling me," she said quietly. Jeremy nodded, looking serious. Jenna hit him.

"Ow!" he said loudly, rubbing his arm. "What was that for?"

"_That,_" replied Jenna grimly, "was for not telling me about _Stefan._ Don't even bother looking innocent," she added, fixing him with the evil eye, "I know you know about him... And besides, I can see right through any innocent mask you put on. I'm the one who taught you that magnificent art, remember?"

* * *

"Elena?"

Jenna's niece shut her book and placed it on her bedside table as she looked up at Jenna. Leaning against the door frame, Jenna wondered how on _earth_ she was supposed to begin this little speech. How she was supposed to tell her niece that she knew all about what Stefan was. Elena had been keeping all of this from her for so long; Jenna should probably be more pissed at her.

It started with two simple words. "I know." From there, the things she said just seemed to flow from Jenna's mouth of their own accord. Later, she wouldn't even have been able to go back and remember anything other than those first two words. "About Stefan," she clarified. "About what he is." Elena's eyes were wide; she didn't say a thing. Just stared at Jenna in shock. "I want you to be careful, Elena," Jenna told her, sitting down on the edge of the bed and looking at Elena seriously. "He's dangerous."

Scratch that, from earlier. Jenna wouldn't even remember those first two words. She wouldn't remember anything she'd said to Elena. Not going on for a while about the danger surrounding the entire concept of dating a vampire, not that Jenna had any idea what that was like. Not branching off into the whole Damon discussion she'd been putting off for far too long. She wouldn't remember Elena's pupils going much too large for a human's, and she wouldn't remember realizing that this couldn't _possibly_ be Elena Gilbert. Jenna never knew about Katherine, who she was; she wasn't able to make the connection.

Everyone was confused as to why Jenna took the news so well, the fact that anybody around her could be a bloodsucking killer. Even Jenna didn't know, although she didn't wonder, either. She just did as Katherine told her, without question. And nobody suspected a thing.

* * *

Jenna stood in the Lockwood mansion as Carol Lockwood turned away, rushing over to scold her son for nearly dropping his end of a fancy dining table. Around her, the house bustled with activity, everybody preparing the property for the masquerade ball the next night. She had to admit, she was excited for the party - she'd always loved occasions like this. Normally, Jenna would have gotten Elena to invite Stefan Salvatore to dinner herself, but instead she found her feet carrying her over towards him, asking him if he wanted to come over that night.

"Elena and I... We're taking a... a pause," he told her slowly, halting in between most of the words, his eyebrows drawn a little closer together than normal.

"Really?" Jenna was surprised; she was sure she'd heard the two of them in Elena's room just a few hours earlier. Why was he lying? _Was_ he lying? If he was, he was good at it. Jenna raised her eyebrows at him, smiling a little. "Because... that's not what it sounded like this morning..." By way of explanation, she added, "Light sleeper." Stefan nodded slowly, looking appropriately awkward. "You know what?" said Jenna, glancing around the dining room. "I heard nothing."

* * *

Her eyes fell on the ring as she stood next to Alaric at the counter. It was so similar to Jeremy's, she thought, and occupied herself for a few lengthy moments, wondering why, as Ric chopped vegetables. "You're pretty handy with that thing," she told him as she walked around to his other side, glass of red wine in one hand.

"Oh, it's just a skill," he answered, smiling. The knife clicked against the cutting board quickly. "Here." Turning to face her, he held up a piece of carrot and kissed her before she'd even finished chewing. "Where's the sea salt?" he asked, pulling back.

"Table," replied Jenna, kissing him again before he could leave to get it.

* * *

The knife was entrancing. The way the light overhead shone down upon it and reflected off the sharp silver blade. The way the dull black handle felt in her hands. The way it sliced so easily, so efficiently, through the loaf of bread sitting before her on the counter, like soft butter.

She could hear Elena talking to someone on the phone. She wasn't sure who... Hadn't she been talking to them, only a few moments ago, before she'd given her niece the cordless phone? Oh, well. She couldn't remember now.

Holding the knife up gave her this strange feeling of _power._ She wondered if the knife cut so easily through skin. She tried to imagine how that would feel. Would it _hurt?_ And then, ignoring the din around her - Elena dropping the phone, yelling her name; was that Ric yelling, too? - Jeremy pounding down the stairs at the sound of the shouting - her own heartbeat, which she could hear pounding in her ears - Jenna plunged the knife down in one quick, sharp motion. It cut through her skin like soft butter.

_**Author's Note:**__ Oh, yes. She so totally stabbed herself. I thought it would be a good, unexpected twist. Muahahaha! I totally screamed when she stabbed herself in the show, though. :P Anyways, thanks to the people who reviewed last chapter, and this chapter would've been up a couple days ago if I wasn't so lazy. Wow, it's very... section-y, isn't it? I write it all during French, sometimes chemistry... When I'm done my work, of course. HEY. What are all of you guys doing for Halloween? I'm staying at home, going on the computer all night, and handing out candy... :P_


	4. Haunted

**Chapter 3**

White. Everything was white. Jenna blinked and stared up at the blank white ceiling Under the pale blue sheets, she found the spot that ached dully, just under her ribcage. She pressed lightly on it, and winced as the pain increased. She didn't know why she did it, but she applied pressure again, then a third time, and a fourth. At first, she thought that the room was empty. Just her. Alone. But then she heard the light, even breathing, and as she glanced around, she saw him, asleep in the chair next to the bed she lay in.

"Ric," she whispered. Her throat was so dry; even at such a low volume and pitch, her voice cracked mid-syllable. He must have been sleeping lighter than she usually did, because at this whisper, his eyes opened and he smiled softly at her. "What... what happened?"

He sat up, rubbing his eyes, and said, "Hey, you're awake."

She nodded. "What happened?" Jenna asked again.

RIc pulled out his phone, his fingers tapping over the keys. Jenna listened to the soft clicks of each button until he looked up at her. "We were making dinner at your house, do you remember?" He launched into the recap of that night's events. "I was setting the table, and you were cutting bread... And then you slipped," he explained, "and you... you fell. On the knife."

Jenna tried to prop herself up on her elbows. A pain shot instantly through her stomach; Ric was out of his chair and by her side in an instant, his hands on her shoulders, pushing her gently back onto the pillows. "Don't try to get up," he said. "Not yet."

She didn't know why, but something about what he'd said seemed _wrong._ Jenna didn't think Ric was telling the truth - which just pissed her off, really, because not so long ago, he'd been keeping other things from her, too. What had they been again? All she really remembered now was something about... Isobel. And the Salvatore brothers... And Elena's eyes? What did that have to do with anything?

But something was dawning on her, a black patch in her memory being raised up to reveal... something. _The knife was entrancing. The way the light overhead shone down upon it and reflected off the sharp silver blade..._ Jenna closed her eyes for a moment, and images began to flash across her mind. Hands, holding up a large, sharp knife... _Her _hands? The light glinting off of the stainless steel. Ric pacing by the kitchen table, Elena holding the phone to her ear behind him. She looked afraid... The knife, quickly going down, cutting through the air, through her shirt, and into the soft flesh of her stomach.

Jenna's eyes flew open, her fingers finding that sore spot just below her ribcage again. "No," she said. Ric frowned at her, confused. "No, that's not right. I... I stabbed myself." Her gaze shifted quickly to her stomach, covered in a hospital-blue bedsheet and a somewhat-itchy hospital gown, and then back to Ric's confused eyes. "Why did I -"

"You didn't, Jenna," he told her seriously. His words flew from his mouth - did he really sound _panicked?_ Or was it just her imagination? "You slipped, and you fell on the knife, Jenna."

She stared him down. "Why are you lying to me?" she asked, keeping her voice as steady as possible. She'd intended on fixing her gaze on him until he finally felt uncomfortable, until he finally broke and gave in and told her the truth. But about five seconds into this, Ric was saved by the door opening, and Jenna was forced to tear her eyes away from him.

"Aunt Jenna," said a relieved Elena, leading Jeremy into the room and holding up her phone. Jenna squinted at the text across the screen. _FROM RIC: SHE'S UP._ "You're awake!"

"What happened to me?" demanded Jenna, fixing her niece with an intense stare.

Elena glanced from Jenna, to Ric, to Jeremy, then back to her aunt. "You, um, you fell. In the kitchen. On the knife," she said, tucking a lock of dark hair behind one ear. Her words were choppy, forced, coming out in quick little spurts. She was nervous. Jenna knew her well enough to be able to tell.

"It was a piece of bad luck," added Jeremy. If he knew the truth, which he probably did, he was better at hiding it than his sister - _adoptive sister _- was. "A freak accident."

God, they must have thought she was _stupid!_ Jenna glared at all three of them at once, her hands clenching into fists underneath the sheets, the fabric of her hospital gown sqeezed between her fingers. Did they really think that she wouldn't remember anything? That she would just go along with their story? Buy into their lies? "You're lying," whispered Jenna, looking at each of them in turn. "You're lying, all of you. Why are you lying?" Nobody answered, and she went on angrily," I don't like being lied to. You all know that. I can handle the truth."

"The problem is," said Jeremy, twisting the Gilberts' family ring around his finger, "we don't know the whole truth."

Jenna couldn't figure out what that meant.

* * *

She was leaving the Mystic Grill, walking along the dimly-lit, nearly-empty street. There was a blur of movement, off to the side, just outside of the pool of light formed by a nearby streetlight. Jenna stopped walking, looked around cautiously. Words echoed in her mind, the voice so quiet she couldn't even recognize it, hissing eerily through her head. _Aunt Jenna? Do you have a minute?_

She saw another blur of movement, across the street this time. _Aren't you going out with Anna tonight?_ This was a different voice. She still couldn't tell who it was. She could barely even make out the words they were whispering into her ear. She glanced around anxiously - there was nobody there. Her feet carried her forwards of her own accord, into the middle of the street. There were no cars around, not even simply parked by the curb. This, in itself, was strange, Jenna thought.

_Um, yeah. But I... I have to talk to you._ Another blur. Jenna reached the other side of the street. Standing on the sidewalk, she turned in a slow circle, examining her surroundings carefully, cautiously. _Sure._ Now she recognized this voice as her own. The voices in her head were murmurs now, just a note above a whisper. _What's up?_ What was the point of this conversation running through her mind, anyways? It didn't seem to have any meaning behind it.

Somebody _attacked _her. Tackled her and knocked her to the ground. Her head smacked against the concerte; stars exploded behind her eyelids. She screamed, but the piercing sound that emerged wasn't loud enough for anyone to hear her, it seemed. There weren't any people around, anyhow. Through all the adrenaline, Jenna could hear the muted sound of the music playing in the Grill. Muffled by the building itself. Her attacker loomed over her, unrecognizable. Big eyes, the irises darker than they should be, the pupils larger than expected. The veins over the cheekbones were rising up out of their skin, and the mouth was open. And those were some big - very _sharp_ - canines... Jenna drew another breath to try screaming again, but the fangs - because that's what they were, she realized - were sinking into the base of her neck, tearing her skin and making her lightheaded as the blood was drained from her body. Slowly, slowly.

Jenna's world went black, starting at the edges, fading slowly in until there was nothing left to look at. Only the all-surrounding darkness. The sound around her, the pain in her neck, all of that faded out, too, until the only sound left was the whisper of that first voice in her head. Jeremy, her mind told her. _Do you believe in vampires?

* * *

_

The world came flying back into focus as Jenna awoke. The room was dark - she was alone. The moonlight shone a little bit through the gaps in the curtains. Glancing at the chair next to her bed, Jenna tried to slow her breathing. Ric wasn't there; she stared up at the ceiling and attempted to calm herself down, knowing that if he _were_ there, he could comfort her properly. Slowly, she raised one shaking hand and gingerly touched the base of her neck. The skin there was smooth and unbroken. She breathed a sigh of relief - it had all been a dream.

At some point, as Jenna lay there and counted one by one, well into the six-hundreds, calming herself down, she fell asleep again. This sleep was dreamless, and when she woke again, the world was filled with a cold, grey brightness.

The nightmare was coming back to her now, and her breath caught in her throat as she remembered it. All of it. Not just the dream, but everything Jeremy had told her, everything Alaric had told her, everything Elena had told her to _do._

_Elena_ had told her to stab herself...

door opened slowly, and Elena herself peeked into the room. Jenna stared at her niece. All she could see was the eyes, wide and dark, and all she could hear was the voice, the only thing Jenna had been able to focus on.

"How are you feeling?" asked Elena. Jenna didn't answer; her mind was frozen. Elena frowned at her, face filled with concern. If it was fake, the girl was a good actress. "Are you okay?"

A single word shot through Jenna's mind, tinted with fear and urgency. _Run._ Jenna scrambled to get away from Elena Gilbert, ignoring the sudden pain shooting through her stomach, the way her head spun as she stood quickly and backed away from Elena. The girl was blocking the door; Jenna ran out of space, backed up against the wall, breathing hard. A frightened-looking Elena lunged forwards - Jenna cringed, but Elena wasn't coming at her. Instead, her hand slammed down on a big red button next to the bed. "Jenna," she said desperately, straightening up, "what's wrong? Are you okay?"

Jenna pressed her back into the white-washed wall as far as she could, staring at Elena fearfully until the door flew open, just as the world spun just a little too much and Jenna felt the ground rushing up to meet her. The last thing she saw was a nurse rushing over to her, and Elena following. She would have screamed if she could.

* * *

_**Author's Note:**__ Okay, so this chapter is another short-ish one. It was originally going to continue, but then there wouldn't be a good place to stop until it was about ten pages long, and I figured that was just too much. So I ended it here, and next time I'll do the other part. Now... I must say that I think I'm still high on sugar from handing out candy on Sunday. I literally just sat there on the computer all night with a bowl of candy beside me, and gave the kids all the ones I didn't like, LOL. _

_Thanks to the people who reviewed last chapter! I love you guys. Especially Adrianna. She is my BFF - or one of them, at least - and she is just the most awesome person on the planet. And she is also shorter than me. So there! Um... Yeah. I thought you guys might like to read her review, because it was anonymous so I have to reply to it in this note anyways. Because I told her I would. I think. I always forget who I tell things to._

I have read this like 6 times since you sent me the link, and it is really, really good. You need to publish some books asap, because you are actually a great writer, just saying. And I am writing feedback on a fan fiction website rather than sending you a facebook message, because I'm a champ. Love you Rachoeee. PS: ALAN!

_Let me just explain a couple quick things. Rachoe is her name for me. It's pronounced like RATCH-HO. I only agreed to let her call me that because she promised to give me a ride to school once she gets a car. She works at McDonalds with Thomas the McDonalds Rapist (although he got fired...) and so she is a hell of a lot richer than I am. Also, Alan is this real-life guy who is pretty chill even though we've never met him. We wrote a story about him, though. In it, he hooked up with Carly and then cheated on her with a penguin. He is a penguin-sexual. Ian Somerhalder killed him (then got together with Adrianna... I got Steven R. McQueen, haha) and Alan was reincarnated as a ladybug. His penguin lover married Carly, but died and was reincarnated as an elephant. Alan and the penguin got back together, but the penguin-elephant squished the Alan-ladybug... And then Alan was reincarnated again, as a giraffe, and they are still together. THE END._

_There was a lot more stuff in that story, though. We used to write sexual stories during French, but we got a desk change. It was sad. The highlights of the stories were things like Arianna (NOT Adrianna) jumping over the bar to ask Robert Pattinson to autograph her boobs, Ian Somerhalder being a unicorn and then magically turning into his actual hot self, Beccy and Mariah being pole dancers to work on their abs, and Rachel (that's me, haha) working at Hooter's but then being fired because my boobs were too small._

_Wow, this author's note was NOT supposed to be this long. Yeah, I'm a freak. Whatever. I'm going to stop explaining things now... LOL. Please don't be scared of me._


	5. Fearless

**Chapter 4**

She was getting used to this. Just the way to squint to block out the worst of the bright light, how many times she had to blink before the room around her would come into focus. Which angle to turn her head to so she wouldn't have to look directly at the light streaming in through the gauzy curtains. Elena was standing at the foot of her bed, watching her intently. Jenna sat up quickly, ignoring the shooting pain just under her ribcage, opeing her mouth to scream again, but the sound of her own name in a familiar voice stopped her.

"Jenna." She glanced to the side to see Alaric sitting in that chair again, reaching out to take her shaking hand in both of his. This calmed her, if only a little. "What do you remember?"

Casting another frightened look at Elena, Jenna whispered, "I remember what Jeremy told me, about Vicki and Anna and Damon." She looked back at Ric. "I remember you telling me about Stefan, Logan, and Isobel. I remember stabbing myself with the knife... _She_ told me to do it."

"We shouldn't have let Caroline give her the blood," Alaric said, looking at Elena. Jenna watched him, confused.

"She wanted to," Elena replied. "I couldn't argue with her. Otherwise..." She swallowed and gestured at Jenna, who flinched. "Otherwise she might have died." Who might have died? _Jenna?_ She frowned a little, leaning back on the pillows and staring at Elena with wide eyes, silently willing her to get the hell away from her.

"But now she's not safe," protested Ric. Jenna's eyes followed the conversation like a tennis match. She might have died? She tried to make sense of what the two of them were saying. She couldn't.

"Would you rather she be dead?" retorted Elena.

"Of course not! But she's not safe anymore."

Jenna's niece scoffed. "Oh, right, because she was _so_ safe before."

"I want you to tell me what's happening," Jenna said, looking at Ric, not Elena. "I have to know." Elena scared her; as her niece, still standing at the foot of the bed, lifted one hand to brush her dark brown hair from her face, Jenna flinched back. Elena looked heartbroken.

"Elena didn't tell you to do anything, Jenna," Ric told her. Jenna opened her mouth to speak, to argue, but he cut her off and went on, "You've heard about Stefan's ex, Katherine, right? Stefan and Damon met her in 1864." What did this have to do with the knife, and Jenna, and Elena's orders? She tried to speak again; Ric covered her mouth with one hand. "You want to know everything, remember?" he reminded her. "I'm going to tell you, so listen. They both loved her, but she was killed when the town went on a vampire hunt. They rounded up twenty-seven vampires in Fell's Church and burned it o the ground. Stefan and Damon tried to save her, and were killed - they both had Katherine's blood in their system, and they both... came back."

It was then that Jenna realized that nobody had actually told her how somebody _became_ a vampire. "How -" she mumbled around his fingers. It was a miracle that Ric understood from that one tiny word, what she wanted to know.

"You have to have enough of a vampire's blood in your system," explained Alaric. Jenna could see Elena out of the corner of her eye, hovering anxiously by the end of the hospital bed. Hadn't Ric mentioned Caroline giving _Jenna_ her blood? Was Caroline a vampire, then? And Jenna had a vampire's blood in her system? "Then you have to die - if you have enough blood in your system, you'll come back. If not, you... won't. Once you come back, you need to feed on a human. That completes the transition." Why was he saying _you? _He was making it sound as though Jenna was going to be a... "Damon promised Stefan an eternity of misery for supposedly causing Katherine's capture. For nearly a hundred and fifty years now, Damon has been following Stefan from place to place, basically making his life hell however he can. Stefan isn't as strong as Damon," he added, "because he feeds on animal blood, not human. He's had a couple of... relapses, but mainly he survives off of animals."

That sounded very... _Twilight._ Stefan _did_ look like he would make a good Edward, thought Jenna. Better than Robert Pattinson, at least. She'd never liked him as Edward.

"Damon planned to open up a toumb underneath the old church. The vampires from 1864 were sealed inside - alive, but barely. Damon wanted to get Katherine out, but he couldn't do it without help. He needed..." Ric glanced at Elena - Jenna followed his gaze in time to see her nodding. "He needed a witch." _A witch?_ Jenna thought. So she'd guessed one thing, at least, right. Witches. Who would've thought witches would actually exist? "And that's where Bonnie and her grandmother came in."

Wait. _Bonnie?_ A witch? Sure, she'd talked about that a lot last year, but she'd been joking. Right? "They opened the tomb," said Alaric. "Damon went in to find katherine. He took Elena with him, to ensure that they wouldn't close the tomb once he was inside. Stefan and Anna both went in, too - Anna's mother was in there, and Stefan wanted to protect Elena. The tomb - it wasn't fully opened. Elena would be able to get out, but the vampires wouldn't. After Stefan went in, Bonnie and her grandmother opened the tomb the rest of the way; Anna and Pearl got out, as well as Stefan and Damon."

Jenna tried to keep all the information straight. "What about the person they went in for? Katherine?" she asked.

"She wasn't in the tomb," replied Ric simply. "And opening it took a lot of effort - the witches didn't have enough strength to close it again. The tomb vampires got out. Two of them attacked Stefan and Damon at the Salvatore boarding house. Then they caputred and tortured Stefan for staking one of them... Damon, Elena and I rescued him... Or, rather, Elena got him out while Damon and I killed most of them."

"I was supposed to be driving the getaway car," interjected Elena, speaking for the first time since Ric began to tell his story and making Jenna flinch again. "But I wanted to help. Properly."

Alaric shot a glare in her direction. "You could have _died,_ Elena."

"But I didn't."

Alaric sighed and gave up. "Anna had told Damon that the last time she saw Katherine, she'd had zero interest in seeing either of the Salvatores. And then... and then John showed up."

"I'm sorry," said Jenna, more confused than ever, "but what does _John_ have to do with anything?"

"He knew everything." Alaric sighed again. She'd noticed that he did that a lot... "Absolutely everything. And he had a ring, like mine." Jenna nodded; she'd been wondering about the similarities in the two rings since she had first noticed them. "John told me that he and his brother both inherited the rings - the one John wore had been Grayson's, he said, as John had given his to Isobel. Who had, in turn, given it to me." Jenna glanced down at Ric's ring, watching as he ran his fingers over the surface. "Damon killed me," he said abruptly. Jenna's eyes flew from his ring to his face in alarm. "The night of the bachelor raffle. Damon was taunting me about Isobel, and it just... it set me off. I went after him, but he..." Ric took a deep breath. "He killed me. The ring brought me back. I don't know how, but it did."

Jenna tried to imagine how a _ring_ could bring someone back to life. "Jeremy has John's ring now," she whispered, picturing the ring on her nephew's finger.

Ric nodded, looking at Elena. "Yeah. It's a good thing..." His voice trailed off, and Jenna wondered what it was that he wasn't saying. Hadn't he promised to tell her _everything?_ Did he lie? "Jonathan Gilbert was an inventor back in 1864. That's how they captured the vampires in the first place, see. He'd made a device to track down vampires. Pearl stole one of his inventions, but it was the wrong one - when Anna got her out of the tomb, Pearl still had it. None of us really knew what it did. It didn't seem to work. But John wanted it. Pearl gave it to Damon to keep it away from John... And then _Isobel_ came to town, too."

Jenna felt her heart twisting at the mention of Alaric's wife. Was it _wrong_ to think how much _easier_ it would be if Isobel were actually dead? Why did she have to be a _vampire?_ As if Jenna's life wasn't already complicated enough...

"She told me she wanted to meet Elena. I refused to be a messenger at first, but she threatened to kill all of my students..." Jenna cast another nervous look in her niece's direction as he mentioned her. When were they going to reach the part of the story where Jenna learned why Elena - or whoever they were going to claim it had been - had told her what to do? And why she'd done it?

Alaric sighed yet again. "When they met, Isobel wanted Elena to get the device from Damon. She went to great trouble to get Elena to do it, too - she had Matt injured," he said, and Jenna's mind filled with a picture of Matt on the float on Founder's Day, next to Caroline, with a cast on his arm - Isobel had done that? "She had Jeremy kidnapped..." Jenna's eyes widened as these words worked their way into her mind and started to make sense. Ric's voice sounded so casual, like it was no big deal that Jeremy had been _kidnapped?_ "Elena had to give her the device. Isobel would have killed _everyone_ if she hadn't. And then Isobel just... left town." Jenna frowned. What had been the point of Isobel showing up, then?

"And then it was Founder's Day. Anna went undercover, she found out that a bunch of the tomb vampires were seeking revenge on Mystic Falls. They were planning on attacking after the fireworks, but the Founder's Council had a plan to rid the town of vampires around the same time... Isobel had given John the device. John had this other part of the invention, and it was made to incapacitate all the vampires within a certain area. They injected everyone who went down with vervain, took them to the old Gilbert building, and set it on fire."

Frowing, Jenna thought back to her trip to the fire department later that night. "I thought it was the wiring," she said.

"The Council is good at covering things up," replied Ric.

"Isn't _Damon_ on the Council?"

"Damon," Alaric explained, "is _better_ at covering things up. That's how he didn't get caught for so long. He became someone that the people on the Council trusted. Nobody ever thought he'd be one of the people they were trying to kill. He was in the old Gilbert building. Bonnie helped Stefan save him - but only because Elena wanted her to. And that's where things got confusing."

"I think things got confusing _long_ before that," mumbled Elena, still standing at Jenna's feet. Jenna jumped a little at the sound of her voice; she'd almost forgotten Elena was there. She still didn't understand. Was she supposed to just let Elena off the hook for telling Jenna to _stab_ herself? Ric had said it wasn't Elena. But he hadn't told her who it was, not yet.

"Remember how somebody attacked John in the kitchen?" asked Alaric. Jenna nodded slowly. On Founder's Day. Late at night, while Jenna had been at the fire station, figuring out what had happened with the wiring at the old Gilbert builiding... But according to Alaric, it hadn't been the wiring. And someone had broken into the house and attacked John, and he'd been in the hospital... Practically the moment he'd been released, John had left town. "It was the same person you found kissing Damon on the front porch." Jenna's head snapped around to look at Elena. "No, not Elena," he added quickly. "I didn't word that right. But... it was Katherine."

"It was Elena," Jenna corrected him.

"Katherine," he replied firmly. "That's the thing, Jenna - they look _exactly_ the same. Because Isobel, it seems, is very distantly related to Katherine.. The thing about Elena being Katherine's doppelganger is that Katherine is _devious._ She knows everything and she always has a plan. Founder's Day was when she made her first move. Well, none of us know if it was her first move or not... But it was the first one we ended up knowing about. We didn't know she was back. _Damon_ even thought he was kissing Elena. And when you opened the door, do you remember what you said?"

She thought back to Founder's Day. She'd heard someone outside on the porch; she'd gone to the door, opened it, and been _beyond_ surprised to find her niece kissing her boyfriend's brother. Who _wouldn't_ be surprised at that? But... what had she said? As she remembered, Jenna winced. "It's late," she whispered. "You should probably come inside." _She_ had invited Elena's doppelganger into the house? _She_ had invited the so-called serial killer inside? If they were even telling the truth. Which, to be honest, she wasn't even completely sure that they were. Someone over one hundred fifty years old who looked exactly the same as Elena? That was impossible, right?

"Exactly," continued Alaric. "She hadn't been counting on you unknowingly giving her a way in so quickly. She got into the house, switched your vervain perfume for some harmless stuff, and attacked John just as Elena came home. It was a close call. We aren't altogether sure why Katherine didn't kill Elena... But Katherine wasn't even done her games yet. Do you remember that Caroline was in the hospital?"

Jenna tried to pay attention. She tore her thoughts away from Katherine, in the house, pretending to be Elena. There had been a car accident, hadn't there? Caroline, and Matt, and Tyler Lockwood. Tyler had crashed his father's car on Founder's Day. It had been decided that Matt and Tyler were fine, but Caroline had had internal bleeding... After Jenna had gone to the fire station to deal with the Gilbert building fire, she'd stopped by the hospital, hadn't she? Elena had been there, visiting Caroline... There had been some confusing conversation where Elena hadn't seemed to remember that Jenna had told her she was going to the fire station - what if they _were _telling the truth now? Before Jenna had left for the fire department, she clearly remembered telling Elena where she was going... But maybe she'd told _Katherine._

"Bonnie asked Damon to give her some of his blood, just enough to heal her. He did it, of course. He actually does care, no matter how much he pretends" said Alaric, and he smiled a little bit, but that was short-lived. "But Katherine found out. She went to... visit Caroline in the hospital, and she turned her."

So Caroline _was_ a vampire. Jenna listened more carefully as Ric continued. His voice was starting to take on an almost raspy quality from all of the talking. "The day that Damon, Elena and I went to look through Isobel's things, we found out about werewolves." The way he said it was so _normal,_ as if this was no surprise; Jenna wondered how all of them dealt with it, the fact that all of these mythical creatures were _real._ She half-expected to glance out the window and see a unicorn, or maybe a few faeries flitting about. "According to Isobel's research, a werewolf bite can kill a vampire. We phoned Stefan - he was here, looking after Caroline, and getting Bonnie to put a spell on a ring so that she could walk in the sunlight. And we knew who the werewolf in Mystic Falls was."

Of course. Vampires in this town wasn't enough; there had to be a werewolf, too? Jenna tried to brace herself for the werewolf to be announced as Sheriff Forbes or something equally crazy like that. The name that came next still surprised her.

"Mason Lockwood."

_Mason? _A werewolf? She had no time to think on that before Ric continued. "He was in town looking for a moonstone. Apparently, vampires and werewolves used to roam free until a powerful witch put a curse on them, binding werewolves to the full moon and vampires to the night. Well, most of them. Sometimes a witch can bespell something - usually a ring, or a necklace, or something like that - and as long as a vampire has it on them, they can walk in the sun. Mason seemed to think that if he had this moonstone, he could get the curse lifted."

"With a little help from a witch," added Elena.

"And then... then you found out about vampires," he started again. "Jeremy told us you were going to talk to Elena, about Stefan being one and everything. We've been putting the puzzle pieces together. What we _think_ happened is this... You went to talk to Elena, but it was Katherine, and you didn't have your vervain perfume, remember? Katherine compelled you to spy on Stefan and Elena. She told Stefan to rid his life of Elena, you see, and they pretended to break up. You were reporting to Katherine for days."

Jenna felt like she'd been punched in the stomach. She'd been _reporting_ to Katherine? Telling her everything, without even knowing it?

"Jeremy found out that Mason had the moonstone. Stefan and Damon convinced Bonnie to help them; they caputred Mason, found out the location of the moonstone, in the well on the edge of the old Lockwood property. Then Damon... killed Mason." Mason Lockwood, dead. Jenna took a split second to mourn him. "Damon used Mason's phone to tell Carol Lockwood that Mason was headed back to Florida."

Elena gave Ric a break and took over the explaining. "I followed Stefan to the well where Mason had hidden the moonstone. He was supposed to just jump down, grab it, and come right back up." She swallowed, looking pained. "The well was filled with vervain... Caroline heard Stefan screaming, and we used this chain to get me down, Stefan up, then me and the moonstone up, too," Elena went on.

"So you got the moonstone," clarified Jenna. Elena nodded. "And then what?" It was like a suspenseful book. She couldn't wait to find out what happened next; only instead of the feeling you got when you read a book, where you knew it wasn't real, so it didn't really matter, Jenna knew that it _was_ real.

"I went home," she said. "Damon used Mason's phone to call Katherine - Mason had been working with Katherine. Katherine was... angry... that Damon had killed Mason. And... this is where you really came into the plan."

"Katherine always has a plan B," said Alaric quietly, taking Jenna's hand again.

"I don't know how she compelled you over the phone, but she told you what to do... and you did it," whispered Elena, moving slowly and sinking down to sit on the edge of the bed next to Jenna. Jenna did her best not to lean away. So what if it had been Katherine? She still looked like her. "I'm not sure exactly how much you remember. You were slicing bread. You handed me the phone... It was Katherine. She taunted me for a while. She talked about how _easy_ it was to get invited into the house, to switch your vervain perfume, to compel you to spy on us. She threatened you, Aunt Jenna." Was Elena _choking_ on her words? "And I turned to look at you, and all I aw was the knife going down..." Her voice trailed off and Jenna just stared at her niece. There were tears forming in Elena's eyes, and more than anything, despite the fear, Jenna wanted to reach across with her free hand and do _something_ to make her feel even remotely better. Jenna had no way to relate to her niece on this. She couldn't give Elena advice right now, not the way she did when they talked about boys, or friends, or parents, or losing people. She ahd absolutely no experience with seeing people stab themselves... She couldn't even fathom what it would be like.

The hospital room had finally fallen into silence. It was unnerving, how quickly it had gone quiet. Elena sat on the edge of the blue sheets, twisting her fingers together and staring down at Jenna and Ric's intertwined hands.

Jenna had never had to absorb this much in so little time before. She tried to file all the information away in order, her gaze fixed on the curtain directly ahead of her. Stefan and Damon were both in love with Katherine in 1864. Katherine died... but she didn't really? Stefan and Damon both died and came back as vampires. Damon wanted to get Katherine out of a tomb under the ruins of Fell's Church, and Bonnie and her grandma had helped him. Katherine wasn't in the tomb, and Anna got her mother out, and then the rest of the vampires got out, too. The tomb vampires captured Stefan. Elena was driving the getaway car... She got Stefan out. Ric and Damon killed a bunch of the vampires. And then John showed up, and he had a ring like Alaric's, and he wanted a device, and Isobel appeared out of nowhere, and got the invention, and gave it to John... On Founder's Day, the Council killed all the vampires. Most of the vampires. Bonnie helped Stefan save Damon because Elena wanted her to - what was that about? Since when were Elena and Damon _friends?_ Jenna invited Katherine in, and Katherine attacked John, then turned Caroline. They'd found out about werewolves and this moonstone thing. Katherine told Stefan not to see Elena anymore and compelled Jenna to spy on them. Damon killed Mason, told Katherine, and Katherine made Jenna stab herself.

It was all so confusing! But now she had the information sorted out in her mind, ready for her to go over it later, when she wasn't so _tired._ What else could possibly change?

* * *

_**Author's Note: **__Sorry, it's been longer than I thought it would be. Two weeks! *GASP.* I fail. And I kept telling you guys that the next chapter would be up the next day or whatever. But I was really busy with my nerdy roleplay shtuff. So yeah. Sorry about that. OH! And I had writer's block. Around chapter nine of this story on paper. For about a week. But then this morning I watched the trailer for "The Sacrifice" and there was that awesome part in the trailer with Elena's face going all :O and Jenna's in the background going like :/ and being all embarrassed, and Ric's standing there and he's like, "Well... I'm naked." I laughed so hard and then I suddenly got JENNA MUSE! And now I'm really hyper. Which sucks, because as soon as I post this I have to go to bed... :P Anyways, thanks to the people who reviewed last chapter. I like reviews. They're nice. XD_


	6. Take Me Away

**Chapter 5**

Ric helped Jenna stay on her feet as Elena unlocked the front door. Jeremy stood awkwardly on Jenna's other side, ready to catch her if she fell away from Ric - which wasn't too likely, really, when you thought about how heavily she was leaning on him. At first, she had insisted that she could stand on her own, but she'd barely made it out of her hospital room before _that_ idea had been proven wrong...

"Remember, the doctor said to take it easy," Elena reminded Jenna, leading her over to the couch in the living room.

Jenna ignored her. "Do I really have to keep up this story about falling on the knife?" she grumbled.

"Yes," replied Elena firmly. "The rest of the town can't know _anything._"

"What I don't understand," said Jenna as Elena and Jeremy went into the kitchen, "is why the doctors _ordered_ you to be here."

"What, you don't _want_ me to be here?" grinned Alaric, sitting down on the edge of the couch. She was growing tired of lying down all of the time; she felt like a cripple. "I'm here to make sure you don't push yourself too hard... Don't fall on any more knives... Eat enough vegetables and go to bed on time." He laughed lightly as he said this.

"Like a babysitter?"

"You don't sound too happy about it," he observed. "Don't you like me being here?"

She reached up to pull him down to her, kissing him softly before saying, "Of course I like you being here... just not as a babysitter. I'm twenty-nine, I don't _need_ a babysitter."

"Well," he replied, "if you'd prefer it, I could take you back to the hospital, and the doctors can keep an eye on you instead..." He laughed again when Jenna shook her head quickly. She'd had enough of that torture already. Ric leaned down and planted a kiss on her forehead, then her nose, and finally her lips.

* * *

It took a while, but the stitches finally came out, people finally started to half-believe that Jenna could stand up on her own, and walk to the bathroom by herself, which she was thankful for. She often fell asleep on the couch, using Ric's shoulder as a pillow, and woke to find herself in her own bed. She wasn't afraid to admit that she was disappointed whenever she was alone, and beyond happy on those nights when he had fallen asleep next to her.

"You up?" Jenna rolled over in bed to see Elena standing in the doorway, holding a tray of food. Breakfast in bed. A perk of "falling" on a knife...

"Yeah," she said sleepily. Elena ventured into the room, carefully placing the tray on the bed next to her aunt. Jenna sat up slowly. "You know, I can make my own breakfast."

"I couldn't sleep," her niece confessed. "It was something for me to do, and... I have to talk to you." Jenna was instantly reminded of Jeremy, right before he told her about vampires... But she was fairly certain that Elena didn't have another secret that huge to share.

Jenna examined the food. Toast, eggs, fruit, orange juice... "About what?" she asked curiously, picking up the fork laid out on the tray. What had all of those things she'd been thinking of last time been? The first one had been _Anna's pregnant, _hadn't it? Ha. As if Elena would be the one to tell her. _Stefan's pregnant. _Uh... No, Jenna didn't think so. Was _Elena_ pregnant? Her gaze shot to Elena's stomach as she tried to decide whether or not her niece had a baby bump or not.

"About how I never told you about anything," Elena replied. Okay, so no baby bump, Jenna thought. "I kept you in the dark, Aunt Jenna, and I'm sorry. I should have told you."

"Do you know how many times Ric said that?" asked Jenna, smiling bitterly.

"I just wanted to keep you safe," Elena went on, pretending not to have heard her. "I thought if you didn't know, nothing bad could happen to you. Turns out I couldn't have been more wrong... I'm sorry," she said again. "You got hurt, and it's my fault."

_Her_ fault? Jenna didn't think so. "Katherine was the one who told me to do it," she pointed out. "And besides, who invited her into the house? _Me._ It's my own fault, Elena." Did she really believe that?

But Elena was shaking her head. "Everyone thinks it's their fault, okay? Even Damon, because he's the one who told Katherine he'd killed Mason, he's the one who pissed her off and got her to retaliate. Hurting you was her revenge. He keeps asking me to tell you he's sorry," she told Jenna, breaking a piece of toast in half. Jenna didn't even care that Elena was stealing her food. "Just... let me apologize, okay? It's at least _partially_ my fault. I wish I'd told you everything, or even just part of it. You might be okay now if I had."

"I _am_ okay now, Elena," Jenna assured her gently, although she avoided her niece's eyes. She couldn't help it; it was automatic now. The sight of Elena's eyes would probably always remind Jenna of the knife. Even just _thinking_ about it brought back the memories. _The knife was entrancing. The way the light overhead shone down upon it and reflected off the sharp silver blade... _Jenna closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind, but it seemed to be imprinted into her vision. Her hands, holding up that knife -

"But you _aren't _okay," insisted Elena as Jenna's eyes flew open again. "You never look me in the eyes anymore..." Ah, so she'd noticed. Jenna still didn't look at her properly, even now that she knew this. "You cringe just at the _mention _ of Stefan, or Damon, or Anna, or - see? You're doing it now." She sighed. Jenna shook her head violently. Denial. Always denial. "Caroline," Elena whispered. And Jenna flinched. Caroline - hadn't Alaric and Elena been talking about her? That day they had told her everything in the hospital? Caroline had given Jenna her _blood,_ that was what they had said, wasn't it? Jenna shuddered at the thought. Elena was continuing. "You have nightmares."

"I -" Jenna began, but Elena cut off her denial speech before the words were even formed in Jenna's mouth.

"Yes, you do," she said firmly. "I hear you sometimes, talking in your sleep. Ric says you toss and turn, you wake up in the middle of the night... _You aren't okay._"

"I'm fine," replied Jenna dismissively.

Elena sighed. "I'm serious, Jenna. You can pretend I'm not, but I am. It's my fault, part of it, at least, and I'm sorry for that." And with that, she stood up and left the room before Jenna could even _think_ about arguing with her again.

It seemed that nobody actually believed that she was okay, she realized as the days dragged on. Sure, they let her walk around the house, cook her own food on occasion, trivial little things like that. But then they all went right ahead and acted like they knew everything about the dreams she had, the images that came into her mind each time she shut her eyes. They didn't know anything! How could they? They weren't _her._ They couldn't know her.

The dreams were always the same, or close to the same. Traumatizing run-ins with supernatural creatures - usually vampires, with the occasional werewolf, or crazy witch, or some sort of vengeful spirit. Add in the ghostly voiceovers from anything Ric, Elena or Jeremy told her, and what did you got? You got Jenna waking up, sweating, tangled in the sheets, breathing hard. Sometimes she would see the wind blowing through the trees outside, and that had this uncanny ability to draw a scream. As much as she wanted Alaric to be there to comfort her, she found herself feeling a little bit _thankful_ on those nights when she woke up alone. Because everything that he, or Elena, or Jeremy witnessed was no secret. She was sure they had some kind of policy among them, and Stefan, Damon, Anna, Caroline, anyone else who was involved. Anything that any of them knew got passed on, she was almost certain of it. They thought knowing as much as they could might help. It wouldn't. She knew it wouldn't.

So she couldn't help but feel glad, although a little lonely and guilty, whenever Ric left for the night. She would wake up, straighten out the sheets, calm down her breathing, look around for Ric - and breathe this small sigh of relief when she found the room empty. Then, the next morning, she would be overridden with _guilt._ Was it cheesy and lame to say that it was eating away at her insides? Because it was. Not just the guilt, but all of it. She might have even been going hollow inside.

Jenna Sommers was a shell, just the outer casing of a human. Inside, she was as good as gone. Anything she felt was muted. It worried the people who cared about her, the people that she wanted so badly to seem as though she cared for _them._ Jenna wasn't even sure if they could tell she still cared about them. She couldn't imagine how hard it would be for Elena and Jeremy to live with this ghost of an aunt. They'd already lost their parents, and now they only had her. A ghost of an aunt who flinched at the mention of Elena's boyfriend, Jeremy's gilfriend, and practically any of their friends. Who avoided Elena's eyes, and only spoke if someone spoke to her, and woke up screaming in the middle of the night.

The nightmares, she decided, were the worst part. Jenna dreaded going to sleep each night. She knew what lay in wait for her, and she was always fighting the urge to drift off. There was nothing she could do to stop the dreams from coming. Nothing. She tried everything she could. She scoured the internet for parenting tips on how to keep their kids bad dreams away. _Nothing worked._ At times, she was like a child. Alert, following actions and conversations with big eyes, never fully understanding any of it. So why wouldn't the tips for getting rid of a child's nightmares work?

She could only hope it wouldn't be like this forever.

* * *

"No," said Jenna firmly. "I am _not_ watching 'Harry and His Bucketful of Dinosaurs.'"

Alaric laughed as he placed the DVD in the tray. "Oh, come on," he chuckled as the machine sucked the disc in and a whirring noise began to emit from inside. "It'll be... entertaining."

"That show is for three-year-olds," she objected. She pushed herself up from the too-comfortable couch cushions. "I'm not watching it." Alaric put his hands on her shoulders, fell with her back onto the couch. And she _laughed._

God, she hadn't done that in so long. _Too_ long. As he leaned down and kissed her, she realized just _how_ long. The kiss was deep, and her heart skipped a beat as she let her arms come up to wrap around his neck. He traced her lower lip, and as the kiss went on, Jenna found that it quickly became tainted with _need._ If only life could be like this all of the time... No knives or lengthy canine teeth or anything of the sort. Wouldn't that be nice? Ric pulled away from her slowly, his face hovering inches from hers for a moment before he stood up abruptly and went to get the TV remote.

Damn. She'd been hoping to get off the hook on the 'Harry and His Bucketful of Dinosaurs' movie. Why a three-year-olds' TV show, anyways? As she thought this, he spoke, like it was on some thought-triggered cue. "It might help you get rid of your nightmares."

His back was to her; he couldn't see the alarmed expression that crossed her face. "I'm not having the nightmares anymore," she lied, turning her face away and examining the fabric of the couch cushions. She hoped he couldn't hear her heart hammering in her chest, because she could most _definitely_ hear it. It was loud. If _he_ could hear it, it would give her away.

It didn't matter. He wasn't buying it anyways. "_Please,_ Jenna," Ric sighed, "don't lie to me."

"Well, it's not like you've been here the past few nights anyways," Jenna mumbled, keeping her eyes on the fabric before her. She listened intently, trying to figure out what, exactly he was doing. _Click._ Putting the remote back on the shelf under the TV. Footsteps; walking slowly over to her and sitting down beside her. She'd thought they were past the whole lying-down-with-someone-sitting-over-her stage... "So how would you know?"

Alaric sighed again, the sound filling the entire room. "I stalk you," he joked, but his attempt at humour was lost on her. Another sigh. "Elena and Jeremy. They still hear you at night - they aren't deaf, Jenna. Do you really think they don't notice? You're barely _here_ most of the time, you hardly ever talk or laugh or -" He broke off as she sat up suddenly. Her head spun from the speed at which she did that, but she ignored it, swinging her legs off the couch and getting to her feet. "Jenna?" he said quietly.

She would have yelled at him if she could think of something to say. If she had the courage. But she didn't. So she settled for remaining silent as she headed for the front door. Ric followed her; his voice stopped her when she had her hand on the doorknob.

"Are you really walking away... out of your own house?"

Jenna looked back at him over her shoulder, scanning him from head to toe. It did sound kind of stupid when he said it that way, didn't it? But that wasn't the point. "Yes." And with that, she made her dramatic exit.

* * *

_**Author's Note: **__All right, so not that eventful or long of a chapter, but a quick update... SO THERE. My sister was watching 'Harry and His Bucketful of Dinosaurs,' what can I say? Um, yeah. We had another seating change in French and I'm now sitting, like, RIGHT in front of where the teacher stands and teaches. She still doesn't seem to notice when I write stories all through class... Not that I'm complaining or anything, of course. That's good. She's so unobservant... LOL. So. I figured I could update because, well, I was bored, and it helped me make up for the lack of Vampire Diaries. Last night I was at tap and I suddenly got all depressed (well, not really, but kinda) because I realized I couldn't watch the new episode when I got home. *SNIFF.* Anyways... Thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter! And I'll try to update soon. I THINK next chapter's longer. XD_


	7. Innocent

**Chapter Six**

It was raining. No, scratch that - it was _pouring._ The raindrops hammered down on shingled roofs, on cement sidewalks and roads, on the soaking wet leaves of the trees. It was nearly deafening; Jenna almost missed the sound of the front door slamming shut behind her. How the hell had she not heard the rain from inside? It had seemed so silent in there, aside from the whirring of the DVD player.

She would look stupid if she turned around and went back inside. The other not-an-option was to sit down on the porch, still under the cover of the roof. Eventually, she had no idea when exactly, Alaric would come outisde. Whether to follow her or to go back home, she didn't know. She wasn't even sure if she cared, but at this particular moment, all she could do was wrap her thin knit sweater closer around her body and venture out into the downpour.

She was halfway across the road when she heard her name. He had yelled it, but it came to her as a whisper, dimmed by the pattering of the rain. "Jenna!" She turned around, back towards the house. She hadn't meant to. The first thing she noticed was that the door was open, a rectangle of light being thrown out onto the porch. Alaric was following her - that was the second things he noticed. It took everything she had to turn and keeping going, across the street, but she did it.

Jenna didn't _like_ being mad at him. In fact, she couldn't even remember why she'd run away in the first place. It had been irrational. They'd been kissing, which happened nowhere near enough anymore. And then he'd gone and ruined the moment, bringing up her nightmares. That had just set her off. And she had left. It was stupid to walk away from someone in your own house; she realized that now.

"Jenna!" he called again, and his voice screwed with her mind. Her feet stopped without her telling them to, and she found herself turning around. He was mere inches away from her, and she kept her eyes staring straight ahead. It was so much easier than it could have been, considering how much shorter than him she was. When he spoke, she could barely hear him. "I'm sorry, Jenna," he told her. "I just - I want you to get better."

"I'm _fine,_" she mumbled. Her words were lost in the rain, in the wind. She wondered vaguely if he'd even heard her. Probably not.

"Can you just come back inside?" he pleaded. She didn't move. "It's cold, you don't have a coat... and I can't hear what you're saying... and it's not safe out here." When she still didn't respond, Alaric picked her up and _carried_ her back into the house. It wasn't until he shut the door behind them and a wave of warmth hit her that she realized how cold she really was. Jenna shivered violently, sinking down onto the bottom stair. She didn't look at him, even as he sat down next to her; she barely noticed his arm curling around her shoulders and drawing her towards him. Numbly, she buried her face in Ric's shirt. The fabric was wet with rain, cold against her skin. "Are you out of your mind?" he murmured, stroking her hair. Then he just fell silent, didn't even continue, and Jenna listened to the rain falling outside.

Very suddenly, the front door opened, and Jenna looked around to see Elena, Bonnie and Caroline, laughing and chattering happily, pulling the hoods of their jackets down and brushing the raindrops from their faces. Their smiles died as they saw Jenna and Ric sitting on the stairs. Jenna could only imagine what they were seeing - the two of them probably looked like drowned cats, and she was sure that Ric's expression was full of worry and anxiety. Jenna was still shivering a little, and she was sure her face had lost all emotion. _Again._

Elena dropped her purse on the floor, where the raindrops that had beaded onto the leathery exterior fell onto the hardwood. She knelt down beside her aunt, frowning worriedly. "What happened?"

"Nothing," Jenna managed to say. Her voice was flat, dead. _Again._ She knew Elena didn't believe her. Ha. Who would believe her? She was a crazy twenty-nine-year-old woman who had nightmares every night about vampires attacking her. Nobody listened to people like that, did they?

"I mentioned something about her nightmares," explained Alaric. Jenna didn't have the energy to glare at him for telling them. "She freaked out and ended up running outside. I, uh, had to carry her back in."

Caroline crouched down beside Elena, and Jenna leaned towards Ric, away from Elena's friend. An expression of disappointment crept over the blonde's face; Jenna couldn't blame her. It had been nearly two months since Jenna had woken up in the hospital. Caroline had given her blood to keep her alive, for God's sake! And now Jenna was _afraid_ of her. Why hadn't the girl just given up already? Most people would have.

"She should go to sleep," Bonnie said, locking the door with a firm _click._ Ric squeezed Jenna's hand comfortingly as she shook her head. It was as if he could _feel_ the fear coursing through her. "Her body needs it."

Caroline looked deep into Jenna's eyes; she tried to look away, but she couldn't. Caroline's pupils were bigger than they should have been, her icy blue irises getting darker and richer in colour. "You're going to go upstairs and go to sleep," she told Jenna quietly. "You're very tired."

"I'm going to go upstairs and go to bed," repeated Jenna. "I'm very tired." She stood, suddenly sleepy, and started up the stairs. Alaric followed her, one hand on the small of her back, guiding her to her bedroom and helping her climb into bed, his face filled with anxiety. Jenna could hear Elena and her friends muttering at the foot of the stairs. Ric pulled the covers up to her chin and pressed his lips to her forehead as Jenna's eyes closed.

* * *

She dreamed again. Of course she dreamed again; nobody would have expected otherwise. How had Caroline not thought of _telling_ her not to dream? Jenna wouldn't be so afraid of her if she made the dreams go away. Maybe that wouldn't work. Maybe they'd tried it. She couldn't even remember.

She was kneeling in the cemetery, eyes closed. Opening them, she took in the grave before her. _Grayson Gilbert. Miranda Sommers Gilbert. Loving parents._ Nobody had ever added a thing about Mir being a sister. Jenna had _left_ - who really cared that her sister had died? To the world, Jenna Sommers didn't care. Never mind that she'd come back as soon as the hospital had called her, dropped everything and run back to Mystic Falls as fast as she possibly could. Never mind that she'd uprooted the life she'd started for herself after high school, moved back to where she'd grown up, become the sole legal guardian of two teenagers. It had been hard. Who cared?

Yes, of course, she supposed that people cared. But Jenna was an adult - she was expected to be able to cope with it on her own, even to help Elena and Jeremy deal with it. And how the hell was she supposed to do that?

Jenna stood up, walked along the row of headstones until she reached the edge of the graveyard. Turning, she examined the cemetery one last time from underneath the first tree of the forest.

_There._ She should been expecting the blur of movement off to her left; it happened every single night, after all. Her dream-self, however, never expected a thing. She headed into the forest, heart hammering. Through that pounding noise, she could hear the voices. Already? It was so early in the dream. _And then... then you found out about vampires. _Another blur of movement, the slightest rustle of leaves. Jenna spun to face that direction; the woods appeared empty. Just her. Alone. That was too much to wish for, she thought, but the dream-Jenna was breathng a sigh of relief and continuing through the trees. _You were reporting to Katherine for days._ She blinked, an image of Elena's - no, _Katherine's_ - eyes coming to her mind.

_Katherine was... angry... that Damon had killed Mason._ Jenna stopped and looked in the direction of this third blur of movement. Whoever it was - Jenna could never tell who, the nightmares wouldn't let her - knocked her to the ground. The last thing Jenna saw before she blacked out was the _teeth._ That was all she ever saw at the end, and she never knew whether it was real or not, if she would wake up again or if she was dying.

_Katherine always has a plan B._ Alaric's voice echoed in her mind as her vision darkened. Plan B... Plan B... She shot up in bed, her eyes quickly adjusting to the bluish moonlight shining through the curtains. Untangling her legs from the covers, she put one hand over her heart and the other over her mouth, and tried to breathe normally. A hand brushed her arm - she screamed, loud and clear.

"Jenna!" hissed a familiar voice from beside her. Her head whipped around to see the hand's owner: Ric. She hadn't even bothered to check for him when she'd woken up; she hadn't even remembered that he might be there. He hadn't been for so long, and Jenna had forgotten about the possibility. Now she was embarrassed, and there was ore of that coming, she knew. A light flicked on in the hallway - there were footsteps, then Jenna's bedroom door flew open.

"What's going on?" Panic filled Jeremy's eyes; three alarmed faces appeared behind him. Elena, Caroline, and Bonnie. Their girls' nights often turned into sleepovers. How had she forgotten that? Jenna climbed out of bed and locked herself in the master bathroom. Pressing her ear to the door, she listened intently. "Why won't the damn dreams go away?" Jeremy was snapping. "This has gone on for too long."

"What if they _don't_ stop?" asked Elena. There was a long sigh - Jenna couldn't tell who it was from, but her mind was saying _Ric._ "She could be like this forever. I don't think any of us want that for her."

"She's afraid to go to sleep," said Ric. "She doesn't want to let anybody know that she still has the dreams... What I want to know is _why_ she's having them."

Jenna wished they would stop talking about her like she couldn't hear them. She didn't like it, even if she had been having a little bit of trouble expressing her emotions for the past however-long-it-had-been. She'd lost track of the days. They were now talking loud enough that she didn't have to listen through the door; Jenna sank down to the cold tile floor and leaned against the side of the bathtub, hugging her knees to her chest.

"I never had any dreams," said Jeremy.

"I had a few," Elena admitted, "but they went away. I don't think they even lasted two weeks. But this has been happening to her for two and a half _months._" Was that how long it had been? "Nothing else has happened, right? We haven't caught Katherine, or... maybe something happened and we missed it?"

"I think it just really messed with her mind," Bonnie said quietly. Jenna wished that Bonnie and Caroline, at least, hadn't seen her like this. "Finding out about everything. Practically everone she cares about was keeping it a secret from her, and when you think about Logan and all the other guys, it's no wonder she hates having secrets kept from her." Jenna was a little surprised at how well Bonnie understood her. She was a smart little witch, wasn't she? "And then you go and add in the fact that a crazy vampire who looks _exactly_ like her niece told her to stab herself... She could have died. Jenna's been through a lot."

"I would take her to a doctor," announced Alaric, "but I don't know... If she were to tell someone _anything..._ We have no way of telling what she might say. We're pretty much the only people she's been in contact with for the past couple of months. Her work is starting to figure out it shouldn't take this long to recover from falling on a knife... But we shouldn't let her go back to work until we're sure she'll keep what she knows to herself."

Because they controlled Jenna, she thought angrily. She could go to work if she wanted to! Just because she _didn't_ want to didn't mean that it was _their_ choice. She could do whatever the hell she wanted - she was old enough to take care of herself. She'd _thought_ she was doing a good enough job of taking care of two teenagers, too, but now she wasn't so sure. When the kids in your care were both dating vampires, it probably wasn't considered a good thing. None of the parenting books she'd frantically read when she'd been appointed as Elena and Jeremy's legal guardian had covered supernatural, bloodsucking boyfriends and girlfriends. Someone should have written a book about how to deal with your nieces and nephews going out with vampires, and having best friends who were witches, and being bullied by kids with werewolf uncles. And hadn't she overheard something not too long ago about Tyler being a werewolf now? Absentmindedly, Jenna wondered if a book like that would sell, or even be published. Probably not... The author would probably be sent to a mental institute.

"What are we supposed to _do?_" asked Elena, sounding worried again. "_Is_ there anything we can do? Are we just supposed to wait for her to get better?"

"Even if there was something we could do, would it help?" asked Caroline. "Maybe it's just _better_ if she doesn't know anything. I could -"

Jeremy cut her off. "We are _not_ erasing Aunt Jenna's memory," he said sharply. "I've been there, okay? It's not fun. Sure, you don't know a thing. But it's... it's like you're empty. You always know there's something there... You just don't know what it is."

"Besides, it's not safe for her to know nothing," added Elena. Jenna silently thanked the two of them - it wasn't as if Jenna like knowing all of it. It was traumatizing. But from what Jer was saying, having your memory _erased_ sounded, in a way, worse. "Katherine could get to her. If she doesn't know it's not me, she -"

"Just because it might not be you doesn't mean she'll _know_ it isn't. I didn't," murmured Caroline. "So many times. It's kind of hard to tell. You're, like, mirror images."

"But it's better to know it _could_ be her than it is to not know anything," Elena insisted. "And I think she always knew there was a secret, anyways. She just didn't know what it was. She's smart; we have to give her more credit." Again, Jenna silently thanked Elena. Since when had everyone in the other room known her so well?

Standing slowly, she unlocked the bathroom door. As it swung open, she took in the scene before her. Ric was sitting on her bed, fiddling with the edges of the bedsheets, which were still thrown back. Jeremy leaned agains tthe wall next to the door, arms crossed over his chest; Elena was curled up on her side on the windowseat, hair tangled from sleep. Bonnie stood at the foot of Jenna's bed, and Caroline was lying on her stomach, sprawled across the carpet. If Jenna hadn't known better, she might have thought they were having a discussion about something trivial, like a TV show. A slumber party where they were talking about normal things. Not vampires. Vampires were definitely _not_ normal. All of them twisted to look at Jenna, looking hopeful. What were they hoping for?

"You okay?" Ric asked after a moment. Jenna nodded numbly; she tried to walk back towards the bed, but her feet didn't move. He got up, crossed the room, and carried her back. She felt like a little kid as he tucked her in, kissed her on the cheek, then ushered everyone out of the room. He even left the door open a crack, allowing a sliver of yellowish light shine in from the hallway. Jenna could hear the others making their way downstairs, gathering in either the living room or the kitchen - she couldn't tell which - and continuing their conversation in hushed voices.

She didn't _want _to go back to sleep. She couldn't. She waited until she figured they'd think she was asleep, then carefully climbed out of bed. Crept to the door and opened it slowly. Thankfully, the hinges didn't creak as the door moved. There was a vampire in the house; if Caroline listened very carefully, she'd probably be able to hear Jenna's bare feet stepping across the hardwood floor. Right now, Jenna was counting on the fact that the sound of the heater system in the house, and the fridge humming away in the kitchen, and the rain pattering loudly outside, and everything else, would help to mask her footsteps. Jenna sat down on the top step and listened intently for the voices.

Kitchen, she decided. They weren't talking about her anymore. She supposed this was a good thing. Jenna tried to figure out what the topic of conversation was now; she couldn't. It was all too confusing. Still, she tried. It kept her awake, and that's all she needed at that particular moment.

Wasn't it always the way that you had to sneeze at the times you most needed to be quiet? The sneeze exploded out of her; she saw a flash of movement in the hall downstairs. So much like in her dreams that she drew in a breath to scream. A hand clapped over her mouth.

"Quiet!" hissed Caroline, the voice coming from just beside Jenna's ear. "It's just me. Relax." The rest of them were at the foot of the stairs now.

"What are you doing?" asked Jeremy. "You're supposed to be asleep..."

Jenna pulled back from Caroline's hand, edging away from the blonde vampire as best as she could. "I didn't want to sleep." Why couldn't she put any emotion into her voice? No matter how hard she tried, her tone stayed flat and dead.

"You have to sleep, Aunt Jenna," Elena told her, running her hands through her dark hair. She'd noticed this was a habit of her niece's.

"I didn't want to," she repeated.

"Because of the nightmares." That was Ric. It was a statement, not a question.

They'd had her all figured out for so long, but Jenna still felt the need to deny it. She shook her head. "No." They looked exasperated; she should have known they wouldn't fall for it. But she wasn't lying to _them,_ not really. She was lying to herself. It was only to keep her half-sane. Who cared if it didn't really work? "The nightmares stopped." Was it possible to make yourself believe something you knew was a lie? "I just wasn't tired." The huge yawn that escaped her next ruined it all; not that they had been even close to believing her before.

"Stop trying," Bonnie said finally. "If you make her go to sleep, she'll fight it. We have enough proof of that, don't we? Just let her come downstairs. She'll fall asleep eventually."

Like _hell_ she would! But Ric nodded, and Caroline walked slowly next to Jenna as she went downstairs. Jenna refrained from using Caroline as support; instead, she clung to the railing and stayed as far away from the girl as she could. Vaguely, she wondered what Caroline thought of Jenna being afraid of her.

The kitchen was brightlylit, the lights chasing away any hint of the darkness outside. Everyone took the places that Jenna assumed they'd been in before she had sneezed; gathered around the island with furrowed brows. Jenna's eyes fell on a knife handle sitting in the wooden knife block with the rest of them. She froze. Her eyes were open, but suddenly she couldn't see anything in front of her. Only a picture in her mind of her hands, holding up a knife... _The knife was entrancing. The way the light overhead shone down upon it and reflected off the sharp silver blade. The way the dull black handle felt in her hands. The way it sliced so easily, so efficiently, through -_

_No._ Jenna's breathing was speeding up, her body going into what could only be described as "nightmare mode." Her heart nearly stopped when she felt somebody next to her, but it was only Alaric. He wrapped his arms around her, guided her over to the island to stand between him and Bonnie.

She couldn't concentrate on the chatter around the island. She just stood there, numb, eyes staring straight ahead. The only feeling she was aware of was Ric's fingers brushing up and down her arms, leaving goosebumps in their wake. She barely heard the words flying back and forth across the island. She was tired, but she fought each yawn, forced herself to keep her eyes open. And when the morning came, she could proudly say that she hadn't fallen asleep.

* * *

_**Author's Note: **__So I spent the other night going down memory lane with my cousin. We were both uploading endless family pictures and talking on Facebook chat. I haven't seen her in seven years, and she lives in Ottawa. I told her to come and visit next summer for my seventeenth birthday. She said she'll try. So that's cool. Um, yeah. My nana thought Justin Bieber was a girl. HA! I don't like him. She called him a "pretty little girl." IN YOUR FACE, MADDIE! Not that you're reading this, I don't think. Let's see... I did this last chapter, but I thought I'd tell you properly in the author's note instead of just doing it. On a couple of other stories, I've seen this thing where you review, so the author gives you a sneak peek of the next chapter. I mean, obviously it's a ploy to get more reviews, but I thought I might try that for a couple chapters or something, just to see if it's fun or not. And, you know, if it works. XD_


	8. How I Feel

**Chapter Seven**

Who cared that she was _beyond_ tired? That every time she blinked, she was afraid she'd fallen asleep? Did that even matter? Jenna had gone three nights without sleep. At first, everybody else had let her get away with it, thinking that as time passed, she would get so tired that she would just drift off. But now they were finally starting to figure out that Jenna had no intention of going to sleep.

She realized, of course, that she was doing a perfectly horrible job of being a parental figure to Elena and Jeremy. She never knew if they were out or at home, she didn't clean up the house in the slightest, she didn't know when (or if) they had eaten. Hell, it was hard enough to remember if _she'd_ eaten! Thank God that there were so many people to help out. Caroline, as it turned out, loved to bake. The mess in the house had been piling up slowly ever since Jenna's dreams had started, but occasionally somebody would put in a load of laundry or wash some dishes. Bonnie could put things away easily with simple spells. Everybody was old enough to drive themselves to school and other places around town - no need to count on her for that. And Jenna? She sat at home and felt sorry for herself.

They actually left her alone one day. It hadn't been planned, as most things were these days - everyone was at school, and the only person left to take care of her was Damon. Yes. _Damon._ Jenna wasn't too thrilled about that. But after lunch, he announced that he had to go do... _something._ "Vampire business," he called it. Jenna didn't bother asking for details.

He'd barely even been gone for ten minutes when the doorbell rang. Jenna looked at the front door, frowning. Nobody she'd seen in the past two and a half months rang the doorbell anymore; people just walked in. In the back of her mind, she was thinking how pathetic it was that in two and a half months, she'd only been out of the house once - and she'd barely made it to the street before Ric had carried her back inside. Jenna wondered who it could possibly be. She didn't even make a move for the door - she was far too busy trying to figure out why whoever-it-was didn't just walk in already. There was an impatient knock next, followed by the doorbell. _Twice._ Jenna stood and made her way to the front door. Whoever was there, it seemed, had no intention of leaving. So she might as well open the door... Right? If it was a vampire, it couldn't get in unless she invited it. Which she wouldn't.

It was her boss. Mr Daniels. He was tapping his foot on the doormat, looking at the doorbell hatefully and sighing every few seconds. His gaze snapped to her face as soon as she opened the door, taking in her surprised expression. "Miss Sommers," he said, smiling at her. "I just wanted to... check on you. Are you, erm..." He glanced at her stomach, then sighed again. "Are you feeling better?"

She shrugged. "Nearly," she told him. She tried to put a little more emotion into her voice than she had been lately; she didn't think it worked.

Mr Daniels stepped through the door. Jenna tried to remember if he'd ever been invited into her house before - she couldn't even think of a time when she'd ever seen him outside of work hours. So he wasn't a vampire, then. "How come you have not come back to work, Miss Sommers?" he asked her. She wished he didn't sound so _formal._ Just because he was her boss...

Jenna didn't shut the door - she needed it to keep her upright. She leaned heavily on the doorknob, a little surprised that it stayed attached to the door. "They won't let me."

"_Who_ won't let you?" pressed Mr Daniels, looking confused. Well, of course he was confused. She would be, too.

"Everyone."

He looked exasperated. "Would you care to elaborate on that, Miss Sommers?"

She hadn't meant to piss him off... Twisting the doorknob from side to side, Jenna kept her gaze on her bare feet. She shivered a little; it was cold outside. Still, she didn't close the door. "Everyone," she repeated. "Elena and Jeremy and Ric and Bonnie and Caroline and Anna and Stefan and Damon."

Mr Daniels' hand closed around hers, pried her fingers off of the doorknob and shut the front door. Then he guided her into the living room, sitting her down on the couch. He took the armchair, where he leaned forwards, elbows resting on his knees, and stared at her thoughtfully. Jenna looked straight ahead, at the blank, black TV screen. The silence dragged on for what seemed like forever - in reality, it was only a few minutes. _Ha._ It was funny, wasn't it? How she was thinking that like it was a short amount of time?

"Why will they 'not let you' come back to work?" Mr Daniels asked finally.

Jenna shouldn't have said it. She realized that later. But her gaze flickered to his face, then down to her hands, twisting together in her lap. "Because of the vampires," she whispered.

"I'm sorry, but because of the _what?_"

There! There was her chance. To switch in a different word and get away from the conversation unscathed. But instead, without thinking about it, Jenna was repeating herself, pronouncing each word more clearly so he could hear her better. "Because of the vampires."

He frowned at her. "Are you _sure_ you're okay?"

Jenna nodded. And just like that, the floodgates opened and everything came pouring out. "They won't let me come back because of the vampires. They think I'll tell someone about my nightmares," she told him. She'd only just said two sentences, and yet that was the most she'd spoken in the past two and a half months... Her voice was still flat and dead. That much hadn't changed. "I told them I don't have the nightmares anymore, but I lied. I have them every time I fall asleep. That's why I haven't gone to sleep for three days." Mr Daniels was giving her a strange look; this registered in the back of Jenna's mind, but didn't fully take hold. It didn't matter. Nothing did, not really. She shuddered a little and continued, "The nightmares are _scary._ They're always the same, but they're different, too. I'm always alone. And then I keep seeing things moving... And then it _attacks_ me."

"What -" he began, but Jenna kept going, her tone exactly the same. No emotion. Emotion and _Jenna?_ No, those two didn't mix. That was crazy talk! Those two hadn't mixed for two and a half months.

"The vampire," she went on. Her voice, as quiet as it was, filled the entire room. "Sometimes it's a werewolf, though, or a witch. The witches always look like Bonnie... but _meaner._" He was so beyond confused right now, but her mind couldn't even comptehend that. _It didn't matter._ She just kept talking, like she was making up for all the silence of the past months. "I can never tell who the vampires are. All I can see is the teeth, and the eyes. The eyes always look strange. I can't even see the colour anymore. Just big, and dark, and -"

"You're crazy," said Mr Daniels, standing up abruptly. Jenna didn't even hear him. She nearly couldn't see him, either. She wasn't paying attention to him...

"- the _veins,_ underneath the eyes, they stick out weird. I can't see if it's Stefan, or Damon, or Anna, or Caroline, or..." Her eyes were wide, staring straight ahead. No emotion, even now. "Or _Isobel._ Except Ric says she left... Everyone thinks she's dead, but she's not. She's a vampire. She's crazy, and I think she hates me. At least she hasn't been invited in... Katherine's been invited in. She looks _just_ like Elena. She told me to stab myself."

"You're crazy," he repeated. "You know what? Don't even bother coming back to work, okay? I can't have crazy employees -"

The front door flew open. The blur of movement was just like in her dreams. Jenna screamed, and when she opened her eyes, Damon was standing in front of Mr Daniels. She could see his eyes, so big and dark, like she'd been saying. But they weren't aimed at her. "_Don't move._" He left her boss - _ex-_boss? - standing halfway to the front door. Jenna leaned away from him as he looked at her worriedly. His hands were on her shoulders now, his face so close to hers... She was certain he'd been in _some_ of the dreams, at least. She couldn't _help_ being afraid of him. "How much did you tell him?"

He didn't even need to compel her. She answered with just one word, one word that told him all that he needed to know. "_Everything,"_ she whispered.

"Damn it!" he exclaimed, pulling back and dialling a number on his phone. "Hi, could you put me through to Alaric Saltzman, please?" The sugary sweetness was practically dripping from his voice. Jenna could hear a female voice on the other end of the line; his tone changed to iciness in a split second. "I don't care if he's teaching right now, it's an emergency!" A long pause. "Thank you very much, Mrs... Secretary."

She could hear Ric's voice now, as he picked up a phone that Jenna could only presume was in his classroom. She couldn't hear what he was saying. It didn't really matter, either. Was this complete and total depression? Nothing mattered. "Hello, Ric," Damon said, enunciating the name in that peculiar way that only he ever did. "_You_ need to come here. _Now._ Code blue. No, I don't know what code blue is! I just wanted to say that... For fun, why else? Her boss is here. She told him _way_ too much... Yeah. And get all the kiddies out of classes, too, while you're at it."

It took nearly half an hour for everybody to arrive. Jenna didn't move from her spot on the couch; Mr Daniels, too, remained frozen, following Damon's orders. Damon himself paced around the living room endlessly. Jenna's epressionless eyes followed him as they waited. Always waiting.

"What's this?" asked Stefan as they all came into the house, indicating the statue that was Mr Daniels.

"That, brother dearest, would be the boss," said Damon. How did the emotionlessness in _his_ voice sound different than it did in hers? "The one she told _everything _to."

"Why didn't you stop her?" demanded Anna, staring at him incredulously. Jenna noticed that Jeremy had his arm around her shoulders. How had she not noticed just how close those two were? Well, that didn't matter, either.

"Well, you see, I wasn't exactly... _here," _admitted Damon. Ric glared at him. "Would you rather I fed from her, or someone else?" he snapped.

"You left her alone!" That was Elena, and she was angry. She sat down next to Jenna, who didn't seem to notice. "The whole point of you looking after her was to make sure that nothing like this happened!"

"No," Damon corrected her, "the whole point of me looking after her was to make sure that _one,_ she didn't get hurt, and _two,_ nobody got confused about why none of you have been going to school. Nobody ever thought about the fact that people might come looking for _Jenna."_

Anna ducked out from under Jeremy's arm and stood on tiptoe to look into Mr Daniels' eyes. Jenna tried not to watch. "Tell me what happened."

"I... I came to see why _she"_ - here he gestured mechanically in Jenna's direction - "hadn't come back to work. Two and a half months is more than enough time for her to recover. She only fell on a knife... She was acting strange, and then she started _telling_ me things. She's crazy! I fired her."

"What did she tell you?" asked Anna. Jenna looked down at her lap, praying that she would never have to look into a vampire's eyes again. Ha. As if _that_ would happen.

"She told me that nobody will let her go back to work because of the vampires. She said they thought she would tell people about her nightmares. She lied to them, she said. She still has them." Jenna looked up at Ric. Had that been the first time she'd moved since Damon had arrived? And had she actually said that? Confessed that she still had the dreams? Damn it. _Way to blow your cover, Jenna,_ she scolded herself.

"In the dreams, she's alone, and she sees it moving, and then it attacks her. Most of the time, it's a vampire... Sometimes it's a werewolf, or a witch, she said." Out of the corner of her eye, Jenna saw Bonnie flinch. She'd never acted afraid of _Bonnie._ Bonnie, to Jenna, had been as good as human. Unless she was asleep. "She just sees _eyes _and _teeth._ And she can never tell if it's Stefan... Damon... Anna... Caroline... Isobel... She said Isobel left and she's dead... but she's not? And then there was something about Katherine. She looks like Elena, and she told her to stab herself." Mr Daniels looked at Jenna in disgust over Anna's shoulder. "She's insane," he continued, "and I fired her. I'm going to call a mental institute. They can keep her away from all the _normal_ people."

Anna stepped back. "He knows _way_ too much."

"You think?" said Alaric. "What do we _do?_ We'll have to erase his memory, of course, but what do we do about Jenna?"

Caroline opened her mouth, but Jeremy shot a glare in her direction before she could even get a word out. "We are _not_ erasing Aunt Jenna's memory," he said, just as firmly as he had three days ago. "It won't do her any good."

"Have you tried _telling_ her not to tell anyone?" asked Bonnie, speaking for the first time. The way she said it, it osunded so _simple,_ so obvious. How had nobody thought of it before?

"What, you mean compelling her?" Elena looked at Bonnie, then more hopefully at Stefan. "Would that even work?"

"No way to tell," he told the room at large. "The only way to be completely sure is to make her forget.." Before Jeremy could forbid that again, he added, "But that's out of the question. It _might_ work... The only issue would be if she were to let someone know there was _something..._"

"Why can't she just... come to terms with it on her own?" asked Ric. Jenna wished he weren't all the way across the room. It was too far. In the corner of her vision, she could still see Mr Daniels, frozen somewhere between the couch and the door, looking straight ahead, silent as he could possibly be. "She's scared to death of all of you," he continued, gesturing at each vampire in the room. Jenna didn't move, just sat there on the couch, eyes blank. Possibly just as blank as the TV screen. She found herself _wishing _for _Harry and His Bucketful of Dinosaurs_ now. Anything to keep her occupied. "Compelling her to do anything seems to only make it work. Caroline compelled her to go to sleep, and she hasn't slept for three days -"

"We've given her nearly three _months_ to 'come to terms' with it, Ric," replied Damon. "She hasn't yet. Do you really think she's going to?"

* * *

_**Author's Note: **__So my stupid Internet decided to stop working for a while... Then I typed up all of chapter seven, got lazy, and just decided to click "save as" and save it as a new file for chapter eight so I wouldn't have to open another file. Which, yes, I know, takes about two seconds, so I don't know why I thought it would save time. I was a little tired, I guess. AND THEN I SAVED IT. As the same file. And all of chapter seven was GONE. What I do when I type things up is I edit and add stuff in and take stuff out and all of that loverly stuff. My dad decided that it was prime time to kick me off of the computer, so before I forgot everything I'd edited, I had to go and write it all down. And then I was really busy, so I couldn't fix it. Sorry about that... Um, yeah. Thanks to the people who reviewed last chapter! I'll try to update soon. And reviews still equal previews. :)_


	9. Unwritten

**Chapter Eight**

Stefan and Damon dealt with her boss, taking him to the parking lot behind the Mystic Grill and compelling him there. They said something about the fact that if he came to in Jenna's house, it wouldn't work, not really. By the time they got back, nothing had been decided. They were getting absolutely _nowhere._ Jenna hadn't moved from the couch; the others had all taken seats around the living room to discus everything in greater detail. Night came. Still nothing. Jenna rested her head on Ric's shoulder. Every time she began to drift off, she shook her head violently to clear the drowsiness as best as she could.

Eventually, everyone went back home or to bed or wherever they were supposed to be at night. Jenna remained on the couch, where she'd been sitting all day, with the exception of going to answer the door when her boss had showed up. And going to pee. Once.

Ric stayed with her. She was happy about that, although in her current state, the one she'd been in since the nightmares first began, it didn't show. He sat on the couch and played absentmindedly with her auburn hair while she leaned against him and fought sleep.

"Why can't you just fall asleep?" he asked finally. The clock on the TV cable box read 2:54 AM.

Jenna sighed. "Because I don't want to."

"Because of the dreams?" She felt his lips brush her hair. "Don't even bother pretending. You admitted it, remember? We all knew anyways, but you finally said it. You still have the dreams."

"Nope," Jenna mumbled into his shoulder.

He chuckled quietly. "We caught you... and yet you're still in denial. Typical... You know, you're too stubborn." He kissed her temple softly. "I'll be right there, Jenna. You don't have to be afraid of what happens in the dreams. It's not real."

"That's not why I'm afraid." She twisted to look at him better. Okay... Bad move. The look on his face broke her. "Okay, a little bit." Jenna paused. "A lot. But it scares me that you're going to be there, too." Before he could look even remotely hurt, she went on, "Because when I wake up like that, it's... I'm _weak._ I don't like you seeing me like that."

Alaric tilted Jenna's face up to his at a better angle. "Jenna," he said quietly, "I don't particularly enjoy seeing you like that, either... But I wnat to be there to help you... Because I love you."

"I love you, too," Jenna whispered as he kissed her. They'd never actually said that to each other before. She realized that as they pulled apart. Maybe she'd thought it, but she was fairly certain that she had always been afraid to say it to him before he said it to her.

It was moments like this when she wished more than anything that life could be _normal._ Or, at least, that _she_ could be normal. Not half-dead inside, only having the slightest bit of emotion at the most perfect of times - when she was alone, with Ric. And even then, she was sure she wasn't completely _there,_ not mentally. The Jenna on the outside was cold and quiet and detached; the Jenna on the inside was trapped. In a room with one window, the kind that didn't open, so high up she couldn't even see out of it. At times, if she yelled loud enough, the sound would carry through the glass, muffled and barely recognizable.

"Please, _please_ go to sleep," he said, leaning his forehead against Jenna's. Slowly, she shook her head. "Why not?" he asked, looking disappointed.

"I told you."

"Yeah... But what I said trumped what you said. So you have to go to sleep."

"Hey, we never agreed on that." Jenna laughed and pulled back slightly, losing the smile. "I don't _want_ to go to sleep, Ric. So... I'm not."

"You haven't slept for days, Jenna," he reminded her. His voice was weary and he played with her hair some more as he spoke. "It's not good for you."

_So?_ "Because the dreams are good for me?" Jenna rolled her eyes and raised one eyebrow at him.

"You know what I mean. Besides, the more afraid of the dreams you are, the less likely they are to stop." He stood and held out a hand to help her get up. "You've heard that before, right? _Face your fears_ and all that? You have to actually _do_ that, Jenna." He lowered his voice as they reached the top of the stairs, squeezing her hand comfortingly. "Stop letting the dreams control you."

It took a few minutes for her to respond. "But I _can't._" Alaric looked at her questioningly as he pulled the covers up to her chin. She felt like a little kid. "I don't _want_ to face my fears. The nightmares will _always _control me."

He kissed her lightly and turned the light off. "You can, Jenna," he told her, and then he was gone. He left the door open a crack again. She sighed and tried to relax. Ric believed in her, she told herself as she shut her eyes. She braced herself for the alleyway outside the grill, for the empty cemetery, for the barely-used parking lot behind her office. She wasn't even sure if she could still call it that. Had Mr Daniels given her job back? Had the Salvatore brothers erased him firing her in the first place?

But for the first time in a long time, Jenna's sleep was dreamless. She didn't wake up until the light shone happily through her window. She wasn't tangled up in her sheets, her breathing wasn't shallow and quick, she wasn't _afraid._ She actually _smiled_ as she got out of bed.

Heading downstairs, Jenna passed Elena in the hallway. "Hey," said Elena, stopping. "You okay?" Jenna nodded and kept walking; her niece stared after her in shock.

"So?" asked Alaric, looking up from a mug of coffee as she entered the kitchen. She wondered vaguely where he'd slept last night. A smile broke out across her face, and Ric pulled her towards him in a one-armed hug, kissing her hair before grinning down at her.

Life was normal again! Jenna was _free._ She barely even flinched when Caroline and Bonnie came to check on her - under the pretense of picking Elena up for school, although she had her own car. She even smiled and said _hi_ to Damon when he arrived to look after her. She said hi. _To Damon!_ What could she say? She was in a good mood. The dreams were _gone!_ And four days later, Jenna was all caught up on sleep, no longer afraid of closing her eyes.

"So I take it you _won't_ be needing me to compel you to keep the secret," Damon said conversationally on the fourth day after the nightmares stopped. Jenna looked up from her laptop. The cursor blinked on... _Taunting her,_ she thought, very suddenly reminded of the day Jeremy had told her about vampires. Damon was sitting on the couch, his feet up on the coffee table as he scanned the comics. "Nightmares completely gone?" He didn't take his eyes from the paper.

Jenna nodded. "Gone." She smiled. She really did love being able to say that truthfully. "I'm fine - no compelling necessary."

"Bummer," he commented, a page rustling as he turned it. "You're no _fun_ when you aren't afraid of me. In fact..." He finally looked at her, eyebrows furrowed in that typically Damon-like expression. "I even liked it a little better than you hating my guts."

"I thought Elena was cheating on Stefan," Jenna sighed. "With you."

"You thought _Elena_ would do that?" he asked her incredulously. "Are we thinking about the same Elena? No, the only person I know of who would cheat on a guy with his _brother_ is Katherine." He switched his gaze back to the newspaper in front of him.

Jenna nodded slowly. "Yes... but I thought you might have told Elena something that made her okay with it, or... something," she said, somewhat awkwardly.

"I might be an ass, but I wouldn't do that," replied Damon, eyes fixed on the comics.

She looked at him in surprise. He stared back at her, waiting. "I think that might be the deepest thing I've ever heard you say."

Damon looked back at his newspaper, frowning. After a moment, he folded it in half and tossed it onto the coffee table. As he stood up, Jenna listened to the whisper of the paper sliding across the wooden surface. Damon crouched down next to Jenna at the table. Looking up at her intently, he said, "I'll have you know, Jenna, I am a _very_ deep person." He straightened up quickly and looked through the kitchen cupboards. "What do you want for lunch?"

* * *

It wasn't that she didn't _want_ to sleep. Jenna wasn't afraid of falling asleep, not anymore. This was just one of those nights. The kind where she _couldn't_ sleep. She was sure everybody had those nights. Jenna shifted around and tossed and turned endlessly, but her eyes just wouldn't seem to close.

"How did you do it?" Damon's voice was loud and clear, drifting up the stairs from the living room. She still kept her door open, just a crack. Like a little kid. It made her less afraid that the nightmares would come _back._ "She's so _normal,_ so sure of herself. It's kind of... weird. But how did you get her dreams to stop?

Alaric's voice responded, a little quieter than the vampire's, but Jenna could hear it perfectly just the same. "I just told her to stop letting the dreams control her. She said that she couldn't... I told her she could."

"And you knew that would work?" That was Elena! Jenna had thought the secretive meetings were a thing of the past! She was fine now. There was no reason for everybody to _exclude_ her. She wouldn't have cared so much if it had only been Ric and Damon; but now, listening hard, she could hear that there were more of them downstairs. Someone cleared their throat; a girl, but not Elena. Somebody else's weight shifted in what Jenna guessed to be the doorway to the living room. So they were all there. Talking about her. Just like old times, she thought bitterly.

"I wasn't sure," Ric was saying. "I mean, face your fears and all that - but we'd already tried everything. It was more of a last-minute type of solution."

Jenna stared up at her ceiling with wide eyes. Ric _hadn't_ believed in her. he'd thought it might not work. But he had told her she could do it! Ric had lied to her. Just like every other guy she'd ever known! He had sounded so sure of himself. But he didn't believe in her... Jenna's hands curled into fists as she squeezed her eyes shut. Were those _tears _forming in her eyes? Why? Plenty of people had lied to her before. She'd just never thought that Ric would be one of them.

Eventually, she fell asleep. The moment the image around her took shape, her unconscious brain was fighting to wake up. She _couldn't_ be having one of those dreams again - not now. She had been doing so well! For a whole week now. Granted, three of those nights had been sleepless, but it still counted. It had been progress. Life was finally _normal_ again. She _wouldn't_ have a relapse. Yet she was physically unable to wake up.

She was alone. It was dark, silent; it took Jenna a moment to place the setting. She'd never been inside Mystic Falls High at night before. Wandering along the dimly-lit hallway, Jenna cast a glance into each classroom she passed. There was a noise behind her. A quick _whoosh_ of air. Spinning around, she knew what her eyes had missed - the blur of movement, somebody darting between the lockers lining the walls.

Another blur, back across the hallway, a shadow flitting across what little light there was. Then again, down the hall; Jenna whipped around to face that direction. "Hello?" She'd never spoken in a dream like this before. The only sounds she had made were to gasp or to scream... "Who's there?" God, she was so _stupid!_ The dream-Jenna could never figure out that she should _leave,_ get the hell away. Jenna always tried to make her go, but it never worked. Ever.

This time, the blur ended with a solid object slamming into her, a gasp on her part as she fell. She hit her head on a locker as she went down. Which _hurt_. Where was her brain coming up with the pain required to simulate hitting one's head on a locker? _Wake up,_ Jenna screamed at herself, but her mind wouldn't obey. Wasn't that what her mind was _for?_ To make her body do what she told it to?

Teeth, eyes, veins, _teeth..._ Always the teeth. The world went dark in the same fashion it always did; starting at the edges, blotting out her vision until there was nothing left to look at. The sound disappeared, too - the hum of the fluorescent lights, the ringing in her ears from hitting her head.

Alaric's voice was what brought her back to reality. He pulled the sheets away and gathered her up in his arms, holding her tightly, one hand in her auburn hair. She shivered and attempted to slow her breathing down. "What happened?" he demaned. "Are the dreams back?" He pulled back to get a good look at Jenna's face.

Damn, the tears were coming again. "You didn't believe in me," she choked out, as the first of what was sure to be many tears rolled down her cheek. "You said I could do it. Not to let them _control_ me. And then you went and told everyone you never thought -"

"God, you were supposed to be asleep!" He sighed, moving his hands to her shoulders. His perfect blue eyes looked into hers; she couldn't see the emotion in them, not in this light. "Jenna, I didn't mean that I didn't _believe_ in you. I meant that I wasn't sure it would work -"

"You doubted it." _Me._ She actually tried to say it. Her mouth wouldn't open.

"No, I -" At the look on her face, Ric stopped. "Okay. Yes, I doubted it would work. But it _didn't,_ see? Not really. Because now the dreams are back."

"Are they ever going to go away?" she whispered fearfully.

Alaric looked at her, his expression helpless. "I don't know."

* * *

_**Author's Note: **__Sorry, it's been a while. I lied to whoever the latest reviewer was, 'cause I told them I would have the next chapter up in a couple days, but it took more than a week. Sorry about that. Uhh. That was your Christmas present from me! MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT. (And reviews still equal previews.)_


	10. Dreams

**Chapter 9**

"It was different this time," explained Jenna. "I _said_ something. I never talk in the dreams." Something else dawned on her as she looked around the living room of the Salvatore boarding house. "And there were no voiceovers."

She hadn't been out of the house for weeks - naturally, the first place they would let her go was a house for vampires. Supposedly, Anna lived her now, too, although Jenna more often heard her and Jeremy in her nephew's room. Jenna had never been to the Salvatore boarding house before. It was big and well-decorated, if you liked old pieces. Not exactly Jenna's taste for rooms you had to _live_ in, but she could appreciate the _history_ of it all. _Ha._ Because it had probably all been there since the house was built.

"Voiceovers?" asked Stefan, handing her a glass of water as he came into the living room. "What do you mean?"

"Voiceovers," repeated Jenna, taking a sip of water. "You know, like in movies, when -"

"He knows what voiceovers _are,_" snapped Damon from where he stood by the fireplace with his back to the rest of the people in his living room. The word 'voiceover' was starting to sound strange to her. Damon kept his eyes on the flickering tongues of flame as they licked at the logs in the fireplace. "What he _meant_ to say was, what do the voiceovers usually _say?_ I'm sure they aren't Kristen Stewart wondering what it's like to die -"

"They're things you guys have told me," she said, regaining the attention of everyone in the room. "Like Jeremy - _do you believe in vampires? _Ric - _we shouldn't have let Caroline give her the blood._" She ignored the look that Caroline cast at Alaric as she said that. "_The Council is good at covering things up... According to Isobel's research, a werewolf bite can kill a vampire... You were reporting to Katherine for days... Katherine always has a plan B._" Jenna looked down at her hand, intertwined with Alaric's. "I can never figure out who's saying it until the end," she countinued, "and they're always whispers. Echoey, and barely loud enough for me to hear."

"But there weren't any this time," clarified Stefan, and Jenna nodded. "How come?"

"How am I supposed to know?" asked Jenna, her other hand shaking slightly as she lifted the glass of water to her lips again.

"I just want to answer every question we can think of about these dreams," he replied, "because the more we know about them, the more likely it will be that we can stop them."

"Well, the most obvious question is the one we can't answer," she told them, putting her glass down on the table next to the armrest. It was still half full of water; the glass balanced precariously close to the edge of the surface, looking very crowded-out by faded papers and books. "When will they _stop?_"

"Nobody knows," said Bonnie after a long silence. "But Stefan's right; knowing more about them might help." She played with the hem of her shirt as she spoke, looking uncomfortable. It would be, of course, for the witch just to be in this house, surrounded by vampires. hadn't Elena mentioned to Jenna before that Bonnie and people like her weren't particularly fond of vampires?

"Well, what if there _isn't_ a reason for the dream being different?" asked Jenna doubtfully. "What if there's nothing _magical_ about them at all? You all seem to think that stopping my nightmares is the most important thing to do," she continued, looking at each of them in turn. "But you haven't caught Katherine. Isobel could come back. I'm sure there are a few tomb vampires who still want revenge..."

Jeremy, Anna and Caroline were nodding; Damon hadn't yet turned away from the fireplace, but she was sure that he agreed. He was the type of guy to want to take action, not sit around doing nothing. "She's right," said Anna. "The tomb vampires have wanted revenge on this town ever since they got out - and nowhere near all of them were planning that attack on Founder's Day."

For the first time, Jenna wondered how Anna had lived through Founder's Day. Nobody had ever mentioned Bonnie and Stefan saving _Anna -_ only Damon. "Why aren't you dead?" she asked, wincing at how blunt her words sounded. "Did they not catch you?"

"I was taking Jeremy home," explained Anna. "Damon said he was going to try and stop them, but I had no idea how, or if it would work... I didn't want jeremy to get hurt. When the device was activated, I was out of range. I was lucky."

* * *

"Come on, just go to sleep," Ric urged her. It was past one o'clock in the morning; they were lying in Jenna's bed in the near-silence, the light as dim as it could go.

Jenna shook her head. "I can't." She shivered slightly as his hand brushed up and down her back, catching on the hem of her tank top. He sighed as she buried her face in her pillow. "I can't," she murmured again, her voice muffled.

"Jenna..." He cleared his throat quietly. "We talked about this before, remember? You can't let your dreams control you -"

"Yeah, but that was _before_ I knew you didn't actually believe it would work," she retorted, pulling back a little so she could gauge his reaction.

It wasn't as good as she had hoped. Alaric simply sighed again and shifted a little so he could kiss her softly. She even tried not to respond to that. It didn't matter that she wasn't successful. "We already went over this," he reminded her as he pulled away. As if Jenna needed reminding.

"So?" Jenna just looked at him, waiting. What she really needed was for that to all be erased, to just disappear. She wished Ric could erase it.

"You have to go to sleep," he told her again, looking intently into her eyes. "_Please._"

She laughed softly. "You just want to go home, don't you?" she teased, but as the room fell silent for a moment, a tiny stab of fear shot through her. She'd always been afraid of being alone for the rest of her given life. What if he said that yes, he _did_ just want to go home? Jenna was still a mess; she had been for months, and she wasn't sure if she would be able to handle it if he said that. Wishing she could take those words back, Jenna tried not to look directly into his eyes.

Ric took in her expression carefully, measuring every aspect of the situation. Jenna was failing miserably at avoiding his gaze. Giving up, she stared at him, her eyes wide and filled with anxiety. Alaric smiled softly at her.

"Not in a million years," he whispered, kissing her again. Jenna's heart skipped a beat as the kiss deepened, and he let one hand slip up and underneath Jenna's head, resting on her pillow, and twist into her silky auburn hair. His other hand slid underneath the hem of her tank top, and she shivered again as he touched her bare skin. He pulled away, just for a moment, and murmured, "I'm staying right here."

* * *

The dreams _still_ wouldn't go away! Jenna couldn't understand why. She wasn't quite so afraid of the vampires anymore. Sure, her breath would catch in her throat if one of them moved too fast, or stared at her for too long to be a normal glance. She occasionally felt a spike of fear pierce through her if she saw someone that looked suspicious. But the nightmares continued to haunt her when she slept.

Now, they were a mixture of the kind with voiceovers and the kind where she could talk. Not every single night, but often enough. And then, a few weeks later, there was a new kind of dream altogether.

In the dream, Jenna was sitting on the couch with Ric, and everything was perfectly normal. For a while there, Jenna hoped that it was real life. Life hadn't been normal for so long. Or maybe, just maybe, she was having a _normal_ dream. The kind that people _normally_ had. The kind that seemed like a _normal_ day and at the end you went to sleep, and when you woke up for real, you were really confused, because you thought it was the day after - but it wasn't. The confusing, _normal_ kind of dream. Was that too much to ask?

It dragged on and on and on. Which, of course, wasn't so bad. She was spending quality time with Alaric; even in a dream, that could only be a good thing, right? But it was time for him to leave, he said finally. There was a staff meeting at Mystic Falls High. After he left, Jenna wandered into the kitchen and opened the fridge.

_Nearly out of good food,_ she thought, her stomach growling. She'd promised herself that she would never go grocery shopping on an empty stomach, as it usually led to more junk food than could possibly be good for anyone. But this was getting ridiculous! So she grabbed her purse and her keys from the table in the hall and hurried out to her car. She parked at the grocery store ten minutes later, but when she walked in, it was the rec center.

What the hell? Well, she supposed it _was_ a dream. And normal people had random dreams, right? _Right._ Jenna felt this strange pull, like the chlorine-filled water was calling to her, and she headed towards the swimming pool. Past the library and the cafeteria, into the changerooms. Straight through those. Out onto the pool deck, where she jumped into the water with all of her clothes still on.

She had to get to the bottom... Like all of the secrets. She had to get to the bottom of those, too, Jenna thought bitterly as she took a deep breath and submerged herself in the pool water. But when she reached the bottom of the pool, her fingers didn't brush the tiled floor, but the sandy, gravel-covered bottom of an ocean.

Jenna had never been able to open her eyes underwater, but the salt didn't sting like it should have. Looking up, she tried to judge how far it was to the top. She was running out of breath now. How long had she been underwater? Jenna spotted a long piece of kelp, going up, up, up... How far? She used it to pull herself up, hand over hand, lungs bursting.

Somewhere along the way, the water disappeared, and Jenna could breathe again. The seaweed transformed into a vine in the blink of an eye, and as her surroundings came into focus again, she saw that she was in a jungle. It looked slightly more cartoon-like than she'd imagined a jungle would look like; more like in the Jungle Book than anything else. Still, she kept climbing.

There was something following her. She couldn't see it if she looked behind her, or hear it coming after her, but she just _knew_ that it was there. Her clothes were magically dry now, and her heart was pounding as she climbed. What if it was following her by the sound of her heartbeat? Sometimes, animals could hear it. Vampires could. Could it be a vampire? _No,_ her subconscious mind told her. Its aura - for that _must_ be how she knew it was there - was too big for a vampire.

Her vine was coming to an end. How was she supposed to get away? Glancing behind her again, Jenna was horrified by how high up she was. There was another vine a few feet away; was it too _Tarzan_ to swing for it? And then she was falling, falling forever. She was going _towards_ it! Towards whatever was chasing her. Jenna tried to reach out for something, anything, to stop herself, but everything that hse managed to touch simply slipped from her grasp again. She tried to focus on the jungle flying past her as she fell, faster and faster and faster and faster and faster - and then, very suddenly, everything stopped.

She was on a cloud. Weren't clouds made of water? She should have fallen _through_ it, shouldn't she? But she was lying in the fluffiness of a cloud. How did her brain come up with clouds being _fluffy?_ It felt like she was lying in cotton candy. Well, sort of. She could only _half-_feel it. How confusing. Slowly, carefully, Jenna sat up and looked around. The sky around her was a beautiful blue; she couldn't see the edges of the clouds anywhere.

As Jenna got to her feet, a few droplets of rain hit her. She squinted up, confused. There were no clouds above her; how could it be raining, then? But the rain was falling faster, making no noise as it hit the 'ground' made out of clouds. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision - the raindrops were catching in her eyelashes, blurring the world around her. She reached up to brush them away, but the droplets stuck there, building and building until everything went black.

She was scared now. And cold, she thought, shivering. Everything was cold and dark and frightening. Jenna stood as still as she could, afraid that moving would make it worse. Straight ahead, she saw somebody coming towards her. There wasn't enough light for Jenna to be able to see their features properly. All she could tell was that it was a man, tall, with dark hair and eyes. Other than that, he looked almost _blank._ And because of that strange dream-intuition she always got, Jenna just _knew_ that he was a vampire.

The man said something as he approached. It was one of those things where the words just went in one ear and out the other - but somehow, Jenna knew exactly what he meant. He was going to show her future to her. That's what he was saying, she knew, only with a lot more complicated words.

Slowly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a hand mirror. He held it out to her, the reflective side facing the ground. Her heart pounding, Jenna let her fingers close around the handle he'd extended towards her. The man just waited, watching her. Waiting until she turned the mirror over. She kept her eyes on his, the only facial feature she could actually focus on. He glanced down at the mirror, then back at her. _Look at it,_ her mind screamed. And she did.

She saw herself, looking at her out of the glass. She saw the darkness behind her, and she could only stare at her reflection, confused. Her future was _now?_ What was going on? Yet, as she watched, something changed. The mirror-Jenna's eyes darkened, the rest of her face going pale. The veins in her cheeks were visible through her skin. Jenna looked at her own face in horror, and her mouth opened slightly - mirror-Jenna followed suit. And all Jenna could see in the mirror were _fangs._

She dropped the mirror. Screamed, squeezing her eyes shut, and woke up.

* * *

_**Author's Note:**__ So, there's your last update of 2010! Sorry for leaving it like that. For those of you who reviewed last chapter, I'm pretty sure I told all of you that there would be an epic dream this chapter. Well, how was it? My friend Felicity helped me come up with it. How, you ask? Well, we don't pay attention in chemistry class. And we both love the Vampire Diaries... and candy. Anyways, I just thought I should let you guys know that I posted another VD story! It's very different from what I normally do - not canon, at all. It's even all-human, which I generally avoid. The other thing I would normally avoid? It's Jenna and Damon. Yeah. What can I say? I had an awesome dream about a story and I just had to write it. Anyways, you guys should go to my profile and read it. It's called "Over My Head." Reviews still equals previews, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!_


	11. Someday When I Stop Loving You

**Chapter Ten**

"Aunt Jenna?" Two voices cried it out at the same time. Jenna was frozen. Sitting up in bed, covered in sweat, tangled up in her sheets again... Her door flew open with a bang, bouncing off of the wall as Jeremy turned the light on. Elena hurried into the room behind him, looking anxious.

"Are you okay?" Elena stood at the side of the bed now, running her hands through her dark hair and working out the tangles. "Was it another dream? What kind was it?"

_Overload._ Jenna pulled her knees in towards her chest and hid her face, trying to calm her heartbeat down. She heard Jeremy move to her other side, patting her on the back comfortingly and a little awkwardly. Elena sat down, too, and if Jenna used her peripherals, she could see the brightly-lit screen of her niece's cell phone. _TO RIC: COME NOW._ But before Elena could press the little green button to send the text, Jenna reached down and closed her hand around the phone.

"Don't," she whispered. "Don't bother him. I'm fine." She was trying to convince herself as much as the two of them. Jenna's voice was shaking, and she was sure that Elena and Jeremy didn't even believe her for a second, but Elena put the phone down on Jenna's bedside table anyways.

"You _have_ to tell us what happened," Jer told her seriously. Jenna kept her face hidden as he went on. "Or we'll get him to come over no matter what you say."

Jenna took a deep breath and looked up. Did she really have to relive the dream _now? _Her voice shook as she described it. "It was another kind of dream. Different than all the others again. It seemed like a normal dream at first. You know, with no vampires at all. I was just having a totally normal day. I went to the grocery store, but it was the pool, and I went swimming. To the very bottom. And then it was an ocean... I climbed up a vine and I was in a jungle and it was all like in _The Jungle Book._ And then I fell and I was on a cloud... You know, like in that Katy Perry music video. But then everything went all dark and scary... Some guy came up to me and -" Jenna thought for a moment. She didn't think she could handle saying out loud that she'd seen herself as a _vampire._ "And he attacked me," she lied quickly. "And I woke up."

* * *

She was falling away from Ric. Not in the literal sense; no, this was purely metaphorical. And it wasn't as though she was falling out of love with him, either. She was just starting to realize exactly what being in a relationship with him _meant._ His ex-wife was a psycho vampire who probably hated Jenna's guts - how was she supposed to deal with that for the rest of her life, knowing that Isobel could be out for revenge? Oh, of course, Jenna knew that Ric wasn't her only connection to vampires.

But it was impossible to sever her relationship with her niece and nephew, wasn't it? Alaric was someone she could walk away from without being _completely_ overridden with guilt. Jenna had been the only person even remotely willing to take care of Elena and Jeremy; she was certain that nobody else would step up for the job if Jenna wasn't there. Ric could live without her - and she could live without him.

Who was she kidding? Life would _suck_ without Alaric Saltzman to go through it with. But she had to do it. Because the closer she was to him, the closer she was to vampires. And the closer she was to vampires, the closer she was to _becoming_ one. She would rather die than become this thing that she feared so much.

So she _had_ to do it. No matter how hard it was.

It reminded her so much of the day she'd confronted him about keeping the vampire secret from her. They were supposed to go out for dinner. For a while, Jenna fooled herself into thinking that she could go out and _then_ do it. But that was a bad plan - not only would it be cruel, but she just knew she would lose courage if she did it that way. So she paced anxiously around the house and waited. Each time she glanced out any window that faced the driveway, she felt this nearly overwhelming mixture of both impatience and relief that he wasn't there yet.

Jenna's heart nearly stopped when the doorbell rang. Hurrying to the window, she saw his car in the driveway. _Crap._ She stopped with her hand on the doorknob. _Okay. I'm really going to do this._ Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.

"Hey." He smiled and held out a bunch of brightly-coloured flowers. Flowers! He'd brought her flowers... Her fingers brushed against his as she took them, another wave of guilt sweeping through her. Turning away, she laid the bouquet on the hall table. He shut the door as he stepped inside after her; when she turned back towards him, he kissed her softly until she pulled away.

"I have to talk to you," said Jenna, trying to clear her head. "It's... it's important." He looked confused, but he nodded. She glanced at the pretty flowers, gathering her courage slowly, slowly. "I... I don't think we should see each other anymore."

Jenna couldn't look at him properly. "What?" he said slowly. He sounded heartbroken. He was making it so much harder than it needed to be... She took a deep breath and finally looked up at him. _Huge_ mistake. She looked back down as quickly as she could. It had never been so hard for her to break up with someone before; the guy had usually done something horribly wrong that made it easy. Alaric hadn't done anything wrong at all.

"I don't think we should see each other anymore," she repeated in a whisper, and made the mistake of looking at him again. He leaned down swiftly, kissed her long and deep. It made her head spin; the taste of him nearly made her change her mind.

He pulled back slowly, looking down at her with more intensity in his gaze than she'd ever seen. "Don't do this," he pleaded. "Don't. I love you." _And I love you. So much. _Jenna took a couple of steps back, doing her best to clear her head. Carefully avoiding his eyes, she turned away and attempted to stop the tears that were threatening to roll down her cheeks.

"I think you should go now."

She could tell without looking at him that he wasn't planning on going anywhere. "Jenna..." He took one step towards her, but she held out one slightly-shaking hand and he stopped.

"Just go. Please go." She choked on her words, but he listened. She held as still as she could while he sighed and turned the doorknob. The door clicked shut behind him - through the wood, she heard his car door slam, the tires squealing against the pavement as he drove away. It was only then that Jenna sank down to the hardwood floor and let the tears fall.

Her eyes fell on the pretty bouquet of flowers on the hall table. They were going to die there. She would let them die.

She wished _she_ could die.

* * *

_**Author's Note: **__Sorry for the short and overly depressing chapter, guys. I would have continued, but it wouldn't be able to end for ages and ages... Sorry about that. Anyways, this is my first update of 2011 and my last update before school starts again! Tomorrow. Ugh. I've gotten used to sleeping in, and now I have to go and set my alarm... Which sucks. I hope all of you had a fantastic New Year's! And, um... Reviews are nice. Plus, you'll get a couple of paragraphs from the next chapter. Which is going to be an awesome one, I must say. At least, I rather like it._


	12. Missing

**Chapter Eleven**

Being alone was depressing.

"You okay?" asked Elena as Jenna came into the kitchen one morning. Jenna popped a piece of bread in the toaster. Her movements were robotic and thoughtless. It had been four months. Five months, maybe? She'd lost track.

"I'd be perfectly fine if you guys would stop walking on eggshells around me all the time," retorted Jenna, pouring herself a mug of coffee. "I'm not going to crack, okay? I'm fine. Stop worrying about me all the time!" As her niece and nephew looked at her anxiously, she sighed and added, "I'm sorry. I didn't sleep well last night... I guess I'm a little bit cranky."

They nodded. As if they would disagree with her. It was true - they were so careful around her now. Testing the ice before they did anything, making sure it wouldn't crack if they put their full weight on it. She'd grown tired of this, always wishing she could call the two of them out on it, put a stop to it. Because it made her feel like _they_ were the parental figures in _her_ life, not the other way around. Yet now, when she actually found the courage to say something, she felt guilty. So guilty, in fact, that she'd just taken it back.

"History test today," said Jeremy conversationally. "I actually studied harder than I ever have before in myh life. I'm going to do so well that Mr Saltzman can't even fail me if he _tried_... I'm actually surprised I'm not failing yet." He laughed.

Jenna stared blankly into her dark coffee, curling her fingers around the warm mug as though her life depended on it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the look that Elena was shooting at him: a cold glare with some harsh, unspoken words. Jeremy's laughter cut off abruptly. "Uh... Too soon for jokes?" It was a rhetorical question. Neither Jenna nor Elena answered him. "Um... I have to go." And with that, he hurried towards the front door and his freedom.

Elena shook her head, sighing as she turned to face Jenna again. "Sorry," she told her aunt apologetically, draining the last of her own coffee and biting into an apple. She paused in the doorway as she left. "You going to be okay today?" Jenna nodded, and Elena smiled softly. "See you after school."

And then she was alone. Jenna didn't feel like eating anymore. She dumped the rest of her coffee down the sink; when her toast popped up from the toaster, she absentmindedly broke it inot little tiny pieces before brushing every last crumb into the garbage can. She called in sick for the day - she didn't feel like going to work, either. Even though nobody bothered her there. They'd been told that she was having family issues. They left her alone. It was kind of nice.

Instead, around the same time she would have been leaving the house any other day, Jenna found herself sinking down onto the couch with the TV remote in her hand. She had her finger over the power button, but now that she really thought about it, she didn't feel like watching TV, either.

Why had she done it? He'd been so good for her. She'd finally been happy with the way her love life had been going. After all of the lying, cheating, horrible guys she'd been with, Jenna had finally found someone who could actually be a good thing for her. Jenna _needed_ him. And then she'd gone and ruined it. She always did that! She said or did something wrong, and it was always only downhill from there.

And it had been months, hadn't it? Months. And here she was, skipping out on work, lying on the couch, feeling sorry for herself.

Tossing the remote to the other end of the couch, Jenna stood up and went to get dressed. Instead of moping around the house feeling miserable, she decided, she was going to do _something_. The house was messy. Why not be a total housewife for the day and clean up? She almost laughed at the thought, but laughter was out of the question. Jenna Sommers didn't laugh, not anymore.

She went through the house room by room, leaving each room sparkling (sort of) in her wake. Somewhat cleaner, at the very least. She took a break at lunch time, but only picked at the sandwich she made for herself. After what seemed like hours of sitting at the kitchen table, picking her sandwich to pieces, only every third or fourth piece actually making it to her mouth, she just gave up and went back to cleaning.

The clock read 1:47 PM. An hour and a half longer, that's how much time Jenna had to be alone. Unless Elena and Jeremy decided to actually hang out with their friends after school, like normal teenagers. Lately, they'd been rushing home every day to check up on their aunt. Which, to be honest, she hated.

She started to pick up Elena's clothes off the floor of her closet, shaking out the wrinkles, folding the clothes, hanging up the ones that should have been on hangers. Smiling softly, Jenna remembered how she'd always done that. Her mother would neatly fold her clean clothes and put them on Jenna's bed - Jenna would come home, pick up all of the laundry, and drop it in a heap in her closet. Sometimes she would even do that now, just for the sake of being lazy.

She glanced around the room once more to check if there was anything else she could tidy up. As she headed out of the room, Jenna saw something out of the corner of her eye; a cream envelope she vaguely recognized. It had come in the mail last week - Jenna had wondered what it was, but on the front it had said, quite clearly, _Elena Gilbert. _So Jenna had just given it to her niece. But now, Jenna slowly walked over to Elena's desk. Staring down at the envelope, her fingertips traced Elena's name carefully.

Jenna picked up the envelope, every movement seeming to be in slow motion. It had been opened already. Elena wouldn't notice if jenna took just a quick little peek, would she? As long as she put it back in exactly the right place. Just a quick little peek...

It was a card. On the front, in a shiny, fancy, golden script, it read, _Please Come..._ Jenna flipped the card open. As her eyes scanned the fancy golden writing, her heart nearly stopped, and she felt like she'd been punched in the stomach. _Together with their parents, Isobel Flemming and Alaric Saltzman request the honour of your presence at their marriage - _Jenna dropped the invitation.

* * *

_**Author's Note:** So I know it's been a while. And that this chapter was really, REALLY short. I've just had no energy to type it up lately, what with all of the drama going on in my life. High school sucks. Please review and make me happy...? I'll reward you with a sneak peek of next chapter. Which will be longer. I think._


	13. Broken

**Chapter Twelve**

He was marring her again?

_Why?_ Was he in love with her? Hadn't he told Jenna that he was over Isobel? He had. So many times. Had he _lied? _Would he do that? She couldn't see him lying to her, not then. Maybe now. _Now_ he might lie about that. Jenna sank down onto the end of Elena's bed, the wedding invitation still clutched in her left hand. She squeezed the little card so hard that the paper bent around her fingers as she stares straight ahead, expression blank.

She heard the front door open, then close. "Aunt Jenna?" called Elena from downstairs. Jenna listened to her niece's footsteps hurrying around the ground floor, but did not answer. "Jenna?" Elena finally seemed to realize that Jenna must be upstairs. Jenna could understand why it had taken her niece a while to figure out. She was never upstairs when it wasn't necessary. "Aunt Jenna?" Elena asked again, looking surprised to see her aunt in her room. "Are you okay?"

Jenna looked up at Elena, her insides hollow. She held up the wedding invitation by way of explanation. She watched as the younger girl's eyes widened. Elena reached out for the invitation automatically, stopping with her hand extended. After a moment, her hand fell back to her side. Jenna's voice was flat and dead again when she spoke. "He's marrying her?"

"Uh," said Elena awkwardly. "Yeah, I - I guess so."

"Why?" whispered Jenna. Yet as she went on, her voice grew louder and louder until she was yelling at Elena. "Why would he do that? And why are you invited? Why didn't Jeremy get one?" She didn't even care that _she_ hadn't gotten one. She wouldn't have gone, anyways. "And why didn't you _tell_ me? Why -"

"Aunt Jenna," Elena cut in. "Relax. I'm - I'm not going to the wedding, okay? Just relax..."

"Relax?" shrieked Jenna, standing up. "He's remarrying his psychopathic vampire ex-wife, and I'm supposed to _relax?"_

Elena nodded, making another grab for the cream-coloured card in Jenna's hand. "You're the one who broke up with _him,_ remember?" she reminded Jenna, gently pulling the invitation away. "By the laws of relationships, you're supposed to be over him by now - you taught me that rule, didn't you? And even if it were the other way around, it's been _five months,_ Jenna."

Jenna sighed quietly, nodding miserably as she sat back down. She knew that Elena was right... except that Jenna hadn't broken it off with Ric because she didn't _want_ to be with him. That was what she wanted more than anything.

"I don't know why he's marrying her, and as for why I'm invited..." Elena sat down next to Jenna as she said this. "I'm pretty sure it's because I'm her daughter."

Right. Jenna had forgotten about that. She glanced at her niece anxiously, praying that she wasn't offended. She wasn't even Jenna's niece, was she? Not technically. Jenna hoped that, like her, Elena didn't care that they weren't related by blood. They were still family, in the general sense of the word.

"I didn't tell you because I knew you'd do this," said Elena. As she spoke, she fiddled with the edges of the card. "This is exactly what I've been trying to avoid, okay? You're cracking, Jenna. Just like you said you weren't going to. I was there this morning - Jer's stupid joke almost did it, didn't it? This invitation was the last straw." She looked at Jenna intently. "You're crying..."

Was she? Jenna reached up numbly to touch her cheeks. It was true. Her cheeks were wet with tears - she brushed them away quickly, mumbling, "I'm fine."

"You're lying again." Elena ripped the invitation in half. "You _really_ need to break that habit, Aunt Jenna." As she left the room, she tossed it into the trash can under her desk. "I'm heading over to the Grill, all right? I'll be back after dinner," she called over her shoulder as she headed back downstairs.

Jenna stayed where she was until she heard Elena's car backing out of the driveway. When it was completely silent again, she hurried across the room to Elena's desk and pulled the pieces of the invitation out of the garbage can. _December 9._ This really was a last-minute thing, wasn't it? Who would send out wedding invitations just two and a half weeks before the wedding? Jenna committed the date to memory before returning the stupid little invitation to its rightful place.

Fifteen days. That's how long it would be until the wedding. Jenna had no intention of letting Alaric get away with this. How _stupid_ could he be? Falling in love with Isobel again? What was _wrong_ with him? No, he wasn't going to do it, not without hearing what Jenna had to say about it first.

Her dreams now were usually the kind where she saw herself as a vampire somewhere in the future. Sometimes it was another seemingly-normal dream with this sick twist at the end. Sometimes it was a vision of the future where she watched from afar as her body moved on its own, attacking people that she knew. Those ones were always strange out-of-body experiences. But the worst kind of dreams were the kind where Jenna _was_ a vampire.

In _those_ dreams, she would usually be roaming the empty streets at night; all she would be able to think about would be the hunger - the thirst? - and she wouldn't be able to figure out what she was craving until she saw somebody walking to their car. She would hear their heartbeat, smell just how appealing they were... This was where, in the back of her unconscious mind, Jenna would begin to fight to wake up. Occasionally, she would succeed; but most times, she wouldn't be able to wake up until she was sinking her teeth into her victim's neck. Or, even worse, until she was finished _feeding._

Jenna never told anyone what happened in these dreams. She lied; she told them that the people in her nightmares continued to attack her. She didnn't think she could cope with telling anybody that she thought that one day, she might be a... She could barely even finish that sentence in her own head. How was she supposed to say it out loud? No. No, she couldn't. So she lied.

The morning of December 9, Jenna woke up early. She hadn't dreamed at all the night before, and she felt good - until she remembered what was happening later that day. She took her time getting ready. As shallow as it sounded, she wasn't going to go and yell at him for falling in love with Isobel again and look _bad._ It wasn't even as if she was trying to get him back or anything! Although, if she was being honest with herself, that would be nice. Except for the fact that it would ruin the point of breaking up with him five months ago...

But she didn't care. It would still be nice.

Her hands shook as she drove to the church. As she stepped out of the car, the cold air bit through her coat and scarf. How had she been so stupid as to forget gloves? Jenna stuffed her hands into her coat pockets as she climbed the stone steps. In through the first set of doors; a couple of wedding guests gave her strange looks, presumably because she'd arrived at a wedding wearing jeans.

She was now facing another set of thick wooden double doors. Ignoring the people watching her confusedly, Jenna strode forwards and flung both doors open at once. They banged satisfactorily into the benches on either side of the aisle beyond. Okay, so taht entrance had been a little overdramatic, she thought sheepishly as several people inside looked around, startled. But it had kept her courage up. She knew that if she'd just quietly peeked in and seen him, she would have changed her mind.

Butterflies were forming in her stomach, and her heart pounded in her throat. It was normal for Jenna to get nervous when she was going to try to talk to somebody about something. Scanning the room, Jenna spotted Alaric, standing at the end of the aisle. He was facing away from her, and seemed to have somehow not heard her come in.

This was the first time she'd seen him since she'd said goodbye. She had been purposely avoiding him, she admitted it to herself. Jeremy had even told her exactly when parent-teacher interviews would be taking place. She'd pretended not to hear him. The reality of it all crashed down on Jenna as she stood there, the doors slowly falling shut behind her. She tore her eyes away from him, because it hurt to see him at all. The back of her throat ached, but she started down the aisle, arms stiff at her sides.

_Damon_ was standing next to him. Wearing a suit. Damon! He'd never mentioned anything about this. Was that his own choice, or had Elena - or worse, Ric - asked him to keep it quiet? As she drew closer to the two of them, she heard Damon say, "Incoming."

Jenna's feet stopped moving of their own accord, just a few steps away from him. Slowly, Alaric turned around. He looked surprised that it was her. She crossed her arms over her chest, her face as expressionless as she could make it. His expression was quickly changing, but she couldn't tell what to. Fear? Anger? Worry? Regret?

"What are you doing here?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

Jenna stared back at him now. "You're marrying her?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Jenna could see somebody giving her a strange look, a mixture of anger and anxiety. A guest of the bride's, she was sure, worrying that the wedding might be stopped. Was that what Jenna was here to do? She wasn't even sure. All that she really wanted was to know _why._ Ric cleared his throat awkwardly, then took two big steps towards her, his hand closing around her elbow. Neither of them spoke as he led her to a door to the right of the altar.

Beyond the door was a maze of hallways and sharp corners. He pulled open the first door in sight. Jenna glanced around. A supply closet. Crowded, the shelves full of toilet paper and cleaning supplies. She was closer to the door than he was now; she could have made her escape, but she had to know the truth.

"What are you doing here?" he asked again.

Jenna remained unmoved. If he was going to repeat himself, then she would, too. "You're marrying her?"

He sighed. "I have to."

"Oh, really? Well, that - _beep, beep, beep... _Sorry, that was just my bullshit sensor going off -"

"Jenna."

She looked at him, waiting. For the truth. _I have to?_ Yeah, she didn't think so. If that was true, he'd have to tell her _why_ he 'had' to marry Isobel. Because right now, she didn't believe him, not even for a second. Alaric looked pained as he stared back at her.

"I have to," he said again, like it was really that simple. Like she was just going to say, _Oh, okay, that explains everything._ Like it would make her go away, so he could go back and live happily ever after with Isobel -

Jenna rolled her eyes, doing her best not to get emotional. Crying would do no good, no good at all... "Whatever," she mumbled, turning around and pulling the door open. "Have a nice wedding."

There was absolutely no way she was going back past everybody waiting for the ceremony to start. She took a right out of the supply closet, towards a sign reading 'exit.' She followed the signs, but there seemed to be no easy way to get out of the church. She was sure that would be unsafe in the event of a fire or anything like that. The building had never seemed this big from the outside...

She couldn't seem to run, so she just walked as fast as her legs would carry her, blinking back the tears stinging behind her eyes. She tried her hardest to ignore the footsteps behind her, the way his voice echoed a little as he called her name. She just kept going. Right, then right again, then left... Where the hell was the exit?

He was taller than she was. Of course he caught up to her. He got her into another room - a room that seemed to store folding tables and chairs. This time, he kept himself between Jenna and the door. There was one window, but it was high up, and far too small for her to fit through.

There had been a time when she would never have wanted to run away from him - _ever._

Angrily, she brushed away the tears slowly sliding down her cheeks, hoping that he hadn't seen them. Oh, who was she kidding? Alaric saw everything. He was an observant person. She'd used to like that about him. Back when she had _needed_ him to notice when something was wrong.

"I have to," he told her. Again. _Okay,_ she wanted to scream. _I get it._ Why couldn't he just tell her _why?_

"Stop repeating yourself," whispered Jenna. "Just tell me why. _Why_ do you 'have' to marry her? _Why_ won't anybody tell me anything? _Why_ did I have to snoop through Elena's room to even find out? _Why_ do any of them pretend they don't talk to you? Besides Damon. Is he your best man or something? Since when are the two of you friends?"

He ignored her questions. "I didn't realize you still cared." There was a long pause in which Jenna was sure she felt her heart breaking. "She threatened... people."

Jenna actually _scoffed._ "Yeah? And what's she going to do?"

He sighed. So he hadn't broken _that_ habit. "If I don't marry her..." He took a step towards Jenna, leaving the path to the door open. Surprisingly, she didn't even try toescape. He was so close to her - she wasn't going to leave now. "If I don't marry her, she's going to kill you."

* * *

_**Author's Note: **__So in the news of all the drama in my life right now, it might finally stop! How exciting is that? Me and two of my friends went and told the bestest teacher ever, my dance teacher, what was going on and she talked to one of our vice principals and they had a meeting with the girl who was being a witch. And apparently they're going to have a meeting with my two best friends, as well, because they were heavily involved in the situation, too... But yeah. It's probably going to stop and I'm really happy. Only on the way home from school today I spilled water all over my bag and it got all over my stories... So I have to type super fast and as much as I can. Because I have up to chapter twenty or something on paper, plus half of the next chapter for my Damon/Jenna fanfic, plus a chapter for my original story, all in there... And I can't let all the pages dry together. Anyways, reviews equals previews! :)_


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